The Lavender Beast of Konoha
by Mark Doherty
Summary: In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, Hinata. Gen for now. Surprisingly not crack.
1. Chapter 1

**The Lavender Beast of Konoha**

**Summary**: In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger when she graduates? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, and Hinata. Gen for now.

**Disclaimer**: Naruto was created by Kishimoto Masashi. No disrespect is intended in its use.

**Edit**: I've changed the pairings to only show Hinata, as I'm told that some people may be interpreting the second character as her romantic pairing (when he is actually acting as her mentor)

-x--x--x-

Hinata remembered that day as the one that overtook her kidnapping as the worst day of her life.

At six-years old she was in her clan's meeting room, standing behind her father. To her left was her cousin, Neji, his face impassive. The young girl's eyes glistened as she fought with all her dignity to fight the urge to sob. She knew the dishonour she was facing. She had, after all, been told in exacting detail when her father had called her to his study the night before.

Her father inclined his head slightly in the shallowest of nods as a woman wearing a chuunin vest entered the room. "You are here for the mission? Yuuhi Kurenai, was it?"

The chuunin woman nodded. "Yes sir."

"Very well. Neji and my daughter will be starting their training at the Ninja Academy as of today. You are to escort them to the school and back for the next week. After that, Neji should be familiar enough with the duty to take over as a bodyguard."

"Your daughter is going to the Academy?" The underlying question, which Hinata understood even at that age, was left unspoken – '_A Hyuuga Main Family member is being sent to the Academy?_'

"Yes, that is correct."

"But sir, isn't your daughter a year younger than the Academy's normal starting age? If she is to go, should she not wait until next year?"

"My daughter has spent her life attended to by the finest tutors. While most children wasted their time on rough-housing in the dirt or playing with rag dolls, she has been trained by some of the best teachers available in Konoha. As the heir to the Hyuuga clan, she should be capable of handling the same level of education as our Branch family and a group of other children can. And if she is not capable of even that, then she is not worth any more of my time. Now, attend to your task."

Taking the dismissal for what it was, the chuunin nodded. "Of course. My apologies for prying." She looked at the two children. The cold-looking boy had not yet fully mastered his emotions – she could see that under his calm expression he was excited about his first day at the Academy. The girl, on the other hand, was an open book. Kurenai suspected that it was only the typical Hyuuga training in poise and decorum that was stopping the girl from erupting into tears. It made her heart ache, but in the end there was nothing she could do besides her duty.

"Alright. Please follow me."

-x--x--x-

Neji remembered that day as being much like many other days at the ninja academy.

"Tomiko, where are you going?"

A redheaded girl looked back at her two friends. "Look – over there." She pointed to a small alcove hidden under one of the Academy trees.

"Who is that?" A blonde girl squinted as she tried to see through the tree's shadows.

The redhead looked at the other girl in exasperation. "She's been in our classes for a whole year and you don't know her name?"

"So what's her name then?"

"Dunno. I forget. Hibana, maybe? Don't think the teacher calls on her too often – she kinda hides up the back."

"She looks really lonely over there," the third girl mused.

"Maybe we should invite her over to share our lunch?" The redheaded leader looked to her companions for their approval.

"Or perhaps you should go back to your corner and stay there."

The girls turned around to face a glowering Neji.

"Hinata-sama is the heiress of the greatest clan in this village. It is her destiny to wield her clan's power – more power than you could ever hope to have. Why on earth would she want to lower herself to associate with any of you?"

"What!? You… you idiot! Well if she's so stuck-up that she needs you to act as her go-between, then forget her!" The other girls nodded in agreement with their leader as they turned and stormed back to their eating spot.

Neji fought the urge to roll his eyes at their childish antics. Not one of the students acted with an ounce of self-control or dignity. It was clear that every one of them was destined to be an idiot.

His eyes narrowed as he spotted a boy approaching Hinata It seemed that some people wanted to reach beyond the station that destiny had given them by latching themselves like social leeches onto someone of higher political power. Fools. No-one escaped their destiny. Not while he was here to stop it. Neji quickly moved to intercept the boy before he could reach his cousin.

-x--x--x-

Today was the day that she was sure that it would all change for the better. From this moment on, life would improve. Five years since that day, all it would take to start her new beginning was to walk through this door.

Hinata hesitated, her hand halfway to the doorframe.

All it would take to start getting stronger would be to open this door.

Hinata chewed her lip.

"'Scuse me," one of her ninja academy classmates muttered as he shouldered past her, opening the door as he entered the classroom.

The Hyuuga heiress stared at the open door. This was it. Now was the time to seize the day and-

"Could you hurry up? You're blocking the doorway." Three girls stood behind her, the leader tapping her foot in impatience.

"Ah, r…right! Sorry! Sorry!" Hinata ducked into the room and scurried up to her usual seat at the back. She did her best to avoid her cousin's silent stare – his duty to escort her to the Academy ended at the gates, and he had quickly left her side once they were there.

The girl looked around the classroom as she waited for her teacher to announce the genin team she would be in. For five years she had been in the academy with these people, and despite all the promises she had made to herself over that time, she hadn't managed to approach so much as one of them to try and make friends. She was too afraid, too shy…too weak.

It was a situation unbecoming of the girl who was the heiress of her clan. Expectations had been high of her as the official representative of her age group. Unfortunately, as time had showed, she was the weakest of her generation. Every other Hyuuga child had surpassed her. Her cousin, Neji, eclipsed her in their rare matches at the Hyuuga clan's quarters. Even her younger sister – _her five-years-younger-than-her sister_ – could beat her in basic sparring. With each new humiliating defeat by one of her family members, the expression on her father's face became stonier and sterner until he no longer had any expression at all when he looked at her.

There was simply no comparison between her and the other Hyuuga. Neji, for example, had secured the 'rookie-of-the-year' title with his top marks in almost all areas of examination. She, on the other hand, had struggled to be anywhere higher than the middle of her class's ranks. Some might argue that she was doing well, considering that she was at least a whole year younger than the people in her class – sometimes closer to two thanks to her late December birth date. But in her clan, the Main Family was expected to outshine the Branch Family in any endeavour – being a year younger was not considered a valid excuse to them. In her lonelier moments she sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had of attended the class below her with people her own age. Could she have made friends? Would things have turned out better?

By now she was certain that her father was no longer disappointed in her. Instead, he seemed numb to her existence, barely caring about her at all. But now this was her chance. Today it could all change. With one of Konoha's finest jounin – whoever he or she may be – working with her as a teacher, maybe she could finally get stronger. Maybe she could earn the respect of her clan, her cousin, and her father. Maybe even if just a little?

"-and Hyuuga Hinata. The last team consists of-"

Hinata blinked, before her eyes widened. She'd missed the teacher announcing her team! Her stomach clenched like it had been hit by a sledge-hammer as her eyes frantically searched her classmates for a hint of who was in her team. Her habit of sitting in the back of the room worked against her, however, as everyone was facing forward listening to their teacher as he started to give them their farewell speech.

Hinata started to raise her hand to ask him to repeat her team members' names, but she quickly lowered it again. She didn't want to interrupt her teacher in the middle of his speech and have all of her classmates looking at her. Surely it could wait until afterwards.

"-and remember that as Konoha shinobi that your actions reflect on the village as a whole. Do not dishonour your duty." The teacher finished his speech with a solemn nod.

Hinata's hand started to rise again, her mouth opening to call her teacher's name, when he disappeared in a puff of shunshin smoke. Panic clawed at her as she fought the urge to whimper.

"Well," a female voice rang from her left, "I guess we'll all be partners from now on."

Hinata turned her head to the voice. A girl with her brown hair bound in buns stood next to a boy with bushy eyebrows, fish-like eyes and his black hair tied back in a thick braid. With their distinctive hair-styles, she easily remembered them from her classes.

The boy, Lee, didn't really stand out in any skill, besides being okay in written tests, but she'd never seen him successfully perform any sort of ninjutsu or genjutsu – not ever. There were rumours among the other students that he couldn't perform them, but Hinata had dismissed that as cruel teasing. Dead last in the class, she'd overheard other students saying that he had barely passed the final exams and that was only due to his taijutsu. She couldn't be certain of that - as the girls and boys were usually separated for any hand-to-hand combat class, she hadn't really seen much of his fighting skills.

Dead last or not, that didn't mean that she didn't admire him – she really did. From what she had seen, she admired Rock Lee's determination to prove himself. Where she would withdraw and curl into herself when taunted, he would use the students' taunts as a reason to better himself and to try and prove them wrong by showing them that he wasn't a failure. Earlier in her Academy days she had tried to spy on his training once to see what drove him, but she had soon found that he normally trained in the outer Konoha training grounds, not in the school's grounds. Neji - her constant escort to and from home - had quickly thwarted any idea of following him and secretly finding out how he had found his determination.

The girl, Tenten, was – as she recalled - very weapons focussed. Hinata, as a fellow kunoichi, had fought her regularly. She was best in the class – male or female – with throwing weapons and in general weapons melee and was also better than her in ninjutsu. Unfortunately for Tenten, any weapons melee beyond the use of a kunai or shuriken was not a part of the academy courses, and so she couldn't earn any points on the exams for it. Also, Hinata herself usually ranked slightly above the girl in hand-to-hand combat, as well as in genjutsu, most of the kunoichi classes (except for the seduction/'using your body as a weapon' course which she had failed miserably), and in written exams.

This was not to say that she was better than Tenten. Hinata had seen the weapon shop owner's daughter train after class. Long after lessons were over, Tenten could be found in the Academy weapons range, doggedly throwing kunai after shuriken after kunai at every target in sight. Or, she would be practicing the movements of one of a dozen different weapons in a display of versatility that left the Hyuuga heiress embarrassed at her own limited knowledge of only two forms of taijutsu – the basic Academy version and her clan's Jyuken style. She also admired the girl's single-minded focus and her ability to excel at her chosen expertise. No matter how many hours she spent on the Hyuuga taijutsu arts, Hinata knew she would never be half as skilled in her clan's speciality as Tenten would be in her arts.

In spite of her respect for her new teammates, her feeling of foreboding mounted and peaked as Hinata realised that out of the three of them, she had the best overall academy rank. She was (theoretically, if you didn't know her) the best on her team.

She blinked as Neji leaned down next to her, and whispered to her. "It appears that we have been placed on different teams, Hinata-sama. Just remember what Hiashi-sama told you. It is not the destiny of any true Hyuuga to fail."

She couldn't contain a small shiver at his words. That morning, for the first time in a fortnight her father had spoken to her during breakfast. His eyes had flicked to the new hitai-ite around her throat, before he had said, "_Each team is tested before they are allowed to become true genin. No true Hyuuga would ever fail such a test._"

If she was supposed to be the best on her team, then it probably meant only one thing. Her team must be one of the leftovers – one of the teams that was thrown together after all of the talented students had been assigned. Their team was probably there to make up the numbers – they almost certainly weren't expected to pass. If she was thought to be the best of the three, then this team had been set-up to fail.

And if her team failed, her father would kill her. Maybe literally.

As her cousin walked out of the classroom, Hinata gave her team a weak smile and let out a tremulous "Hello", as she resigned herself to her father's certain punishment.

-x--x--x-

Lunch with her new team was very awkward. Lee was obviously brimming with excitement over making genin – he couldn't sit still for more than a minute. Hinata could see Tenten's hand twitch, almost as if the weapons girl was constantly fighting an urge to tug the boy back into his seat via his hair braid. While Tenten was less demonstrative than Lee, she too was obviously excited for their shared future.

Every time they tried to engage Hinata into their conversation, however, she could barely stutter three words before falling into silence. She wanted to tell them – to warn them, but one look in their excited faces froze the words in her throat. Finally, to her relief, lunch ended and they returned to the classroom to wait for their new team instructor.

Ten minutes later, after the first two teams had met their jounin teachers and left, a new instructor entered the class room. From the gasp of her male teammate, it was obvious he recognised the man.

Hinata had never seen such a visibly strong man outside of the Akimichi clan. Broad-shouldered, with muscular arms and legs, he clearly took pride in his physical fitness as he proudly wore a tight, green bodysuit. His thick jounin vest helped in making his chest seem even bigger than it was as he folded his arms and looked at the remaining students.

Unlike the lean and almost willowy frames of men in her family, there was nothing delicate-looking about this man. His weathered face was rugged and tanned – he clearly spent a lot of time outdoors. His large nose, heavy eyebrows, dark eyes and thick, short black hair would have given him a menacing presence if it wasn't for his kind expression.

"Team 9, my name is Maito Gai. Yosh! Come, follow me!"

Even his voice resonated with confidence and power. Hinata looked at her teammates (Lee was already halfway to the door) and then back at her new teacher before she scrambled to catch up. Surely…

Surely with a teacher like this, she could get stronger?

-x--x--x-

Gai lead them to an open-air balcony at the side of the academy building – it had been a popular place for the kids to sit at during lunchtime. Hinata had tended to avoid it for fear of interrupting the camaraderie of the cliques that favoured the spot. It really was quite a beautiful little place, she noted, with a lovely view of the buildings nearby and the street below.

The genin sat on a bench while their teacher stood in front of them. "You three are promoted to genin as of today. I want to hear what your goals are."

"Oh! Me! Me! Me!" Tenten waved her hand.

"Yosh, Tenten."

"My goal is to become a really strong kunoichi like the legendary female ninja Tsunade-sama!" She looked at Hinata for a moment, and hastily added "But I guess that's what Hinata would have said too. Okay, the truth is that I want to be acknowledged as the premier weapons specialist in the village. I want to show that girls can do more than be medics or use genjutsu to protect the village."

"Hmm." After nodding, he looked at the next genin. "And what about you, Hinata?"

Hinata blinked, and looked up at her new teacher. "I… I w...want to find my strength." Realising just how weak that sounded after Tenten's impassioned goals, she continued, "I have to prove to myself wh…what it is that I am worth. There's…" She hesitated, closing her eyes as she tried to block out the feeling of being watched by her teammates.

After a few moments, she opened her eyes again and continued, her voice slightly stronger. "There has to be more to me than what I've seen! I… I know it! I just h…have to find it." She opened her mouth as if to say more, but she closed it again and started fidgeting when she again registered that the other genin were staring at her.

'_Interesting. I've never seen a Hyuuga like her. There's more fire in those eyes than is seen at first glance_', Gai mused.

"Oh! My turn!" Lee leapt to his feet. "I want to prove that just because I can't do ninjutsu or genjutsu doesn't mean that I can't be a really great ninja! That is everything to me!" Lee nodded, before sitting down.

Hinata couldn't help the small smile that lit her lips as she stared at her teammate. She wished she had a quarter of his confidence. Her smile faltered. Wait, he really couldn't do ninjutsu or genjutsu? And he passed the exam? That was astonishing! How could he have overcome an obstacle like that?

'_And his eyes are also interesting._' Gai smiled. "Very good! Those goals are all worthy of pursuit." Nodding, he continued. "And you can reach those goals through the pursuit of four things. Hard work, dedication, guts," Gai paused and raised his finger to point to the street, "and a worthy rival to strive against in your youth. Follow me, and you shall see the lengths a man will go to when he engages in such an eternal contest."

-x--x--x-

Half an hour later, they were standing atop a concrete silo as they watched their sensei stand patiently on the road below. Hinata stared at her teacher as a disinterested-looking silver-haired jounin approached the man. "Is… is this his rival?"

Tenten shrugged, watching Gai admonish the man over his lateness. "I guess so."

Below, Gai pointed to his opponent. "We currently stand at 48 wins apiece. Today, one of us shall take the lead!"

Lee's eyes burned with fire as he looked down at the pair of men of below. "A fight between two jounin level ninja… imagine the skills that we are about to see. I bet that this will be an epic showdown!"

The silver-haired man sighed at Gai's antics, before lowering the book he had been reading. "It's my turn to choose the challenge, right? Well, if we must do this today then how about janken? Luck is a skill too, after all."

The three genins jaws dropped. Gai didn't seem too happy either.

"That's his worthy rival?" Tenten muttered. Hinata didn't say anything, but in her head she agreed. Seeing such a dispirited reaction to their sensei's enthusiastic challenge seemed to be very disrespectful.

"Very well! And if I should lose, I shall do 500 laps of Konoha while walking on my hands! It's my promise!" A blinding smile and a thumbs-up sealed Gai's pledge.

"He's a little bit strange, isn't he?" Tenten murmured as they watched their teacher engage in – and lose – a game of janken with the other jounin.

As Gai accepted his loss with a smile, tilting his body forward and settling into a hand-stand without so much as a word of protest, Hinata couldn't help but agree with her female teammate. Was he truly going to go through with his declaration? Five hundred laps? No, that was impossible. Surely no-one would go through with such a thing.

The green-clad jounin stood there on his hands for a moment, slightly wobbling, before looking up at his students. "Team, I have heard your goals – now here is mine. My most important goal is to help my wonderful charges achieve their dreams. Be at training ground nine tomorrow at 7am, my youthful students! With hard work we will begin to achieve your goals." He smiled, showing impeccably clean teeth, while raising his right hand to give them a thumbs up. Hinata could feel her respect for the man rise, not only for his promise but also for his ability to remain so stable while only using his left hand to balance his hand-stand.

The scene was so surreal that they almost forgot to say goodbye to their sensei as he slowly hand-walked away.

"Well," Tenten hesitated, "I guess that's it. I'll see you two tomorrow." She nodded to Hinata and Lee before jumping off the silo.

Lee didn't respond as he was too busy staring at the retreating figure of their team leader. "Surely he is not going to actually do it?" the boy muttered to himself. Shaking free of his thoughts, he turned to Hinata. "I am sorry, I also have to go. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Hinata-san. I shall see you at training."

Hinata blinked, muttering a soft goodbye, before she found herself alone on the silo.

Her teacher was nothing like what she had expected, but maybe that was a good thing. She had seen many self-assured people – it was hard not to in a clan as full of confident people as hers. But this man did not have a prominent clan to affirm his power – as a powerful clan's heiress (even a disgraced one), she had been taught enough village politics to know that she had never heard of a 'Maito' clan before. So where did he get the boundless confidence needed to gamble so much over something so little as a game of janken?

She frowned slightly. Wait, what about the test that her father had told her about? Was he so confident in his abilities as a teacher that he had passed the team without even testing them? How could anyone be that confident? Where could he have learned how to be so brash?

And was it something he could teach her?

-x--x--x-

"I'm back!" Tenten shouted as she entered her family's weapon store.

Her father looked up from the sword he had been polishing. "Welcome home. So, how did it go? Who did you get for a sensei?"

Tenten sighed. "It turns out that I have a madman for a teacher."

Her father nodded. "Alright, we've narrowed it down to them being a man."

His daughter looked at him oddly, so he clarified, "Honey, all the jounin are crazy in one form or another. It's a stress-release - the normal ones either quickly retire or crack under the pressure."

"Oh. Well, he said his name was Maito Gai."

"Really?" Her father's tone was definitely excited. He carefully put away the sword he had been holding, and smiled at her. "Congratulations! This couldn't be more perfect for you!"

Tenten blinked. "It couldn't?"

Her father nodded. "Sooner or later I hear his name from over half of my clientele. Everyone calls him Konoha's best taijutsu expert – he supposedly knows more forbidden taijutsu techniques than most other clans combined. He's famous among my clients for matching one of the village's most elite jounin in an endless series of challenges."

"Yeah, I saw one of those today."

"You did?" Her father leaned towards her, eager for information. "What was it like?"

"I've honestly never seen jounin battle like that before," Tenten admitted while not quite managing to meet her father's gaze.

-x--x--x-

Hinata stuck to the shadows as she followed Gai. She had always had a talent for blending into the background – when every eye in your clan looked at you in disapproval, you soon learnt to avoid those eyes. And it took a lot of effort to not be noticed when your clan had all-seeing eyes. It was these skills that she used now as she stalked her prey.

At first, she had chased after her teacher to ask him about the test, but when she saw him remaining true to his word, using his hands to walk through the village while he ignored the sniggering of the civilians, she hung back. It didn't take long to spot Lee just ahead of her, also clearly spying on their sensei.

As she followed her teammates, she would stare over her back every so often, expecting to see the annoyed face of her cousin as he demanded that she 'stop her foolishness' and return to the clan compound, but he was nowhere in sight. She almost flushed with guilt over the joy she felt for the giddy realisation that Neji's tenure as her daily escort – placed on him years ago and never rescinded - had ended the moment they were placed in teams. For the first time ever she was walking through the streets of Konoha without a bodyguard tracking her every movement. She'd never felt this free before.

Minutes turned to hours as her astonishment slowly grew. They had circuited Konoha at least a hundred times, but Gai was still going strong. The sky darkened and the crowds on the street thinned out, but still Gai pushed forward. Sometimes when he had to turn a corner, she would catch a glance of his face. It was strained with effort, sweat dripping off him as the strain of such a strenuous exercise taxed his obviously fit body. But he still kept going.

She was fascinated. Where did he draw his will from? It was obvious that this was putting tremendous strain on his body – she could hear his gasping breath from her newest hiding spot behind a copse of trees. Deep within her, she felt the question struggling to surface. Twice now as Hinata had followed him, she had almost stepped from her various hiding holes and blurted out her questions. Why? Why did he keep going? But each time she froze, worried about how he would react to being spied upon.

Thankfully Gai's other spy did not have the same shyness that she did.

"Why?" Lee stared down at his sensei as he blocked the older man's path. "No-one is watching, not even your rival, so why do you keep going?"

Gai grinned, looking up at his student. "I made a promise while acting cool and posing like a nice guy. I have to keep such a promise even if I die."

Lee couldn't help himself as he chuckled. "But why do you make up such weird rules?"

Gai laughed as he launched himself to his feet. "So you noticed? All right, I'll tell you, but don't tell the others."

Hinata shrank against her trunk, worry gnawing at her. If her teacher didn't want her to hear this, then shouldn't she go? But if she did, then she'd never find out what drove him. Her indecision decided for her, as she stayed rooted to her spot.

"This is my self-rule – my training for victory. The point of this rule is to place harsh conditions upon yourself before you attempt anything. By making the loss less palatable than the win, you force yourself to do your best in even the most mundane of tasks."

Lee nodded as he pulled out a notebook and started scribbling down notes.

Gai continued. "In this case, I imposed a rule of 500 laps if I could not beat Kakashi so that even if I lost, I would be better equipped to face him next time. Mark it well, this is the power to change the future. With this self-rule, you can turn even a pointless game of janken into something to be taken seriously. Best of all as a contingency, even if I lose I gain the opportunity to train my body by doing 500 laps."

"Ah, I see!" Lee nodded as he put his notebook away. "Then I will do it too," he decided as he moved into a handstand. "You see, this will be my nindo – to put as much effort as you into growing strong."

Hinata collapsed against the tree she had been hiding behind, her thoughts whirling. Could something like that work? Was this the power to change her future? Her instructor clearly believed in his words and the man was a confident ninja, capable enough to be entrusted with training a genin team. He was a man who had stuck to his word and walked on his hands for… how long had it been? Her eyes widened as she looked up at the night sky to estimate the time. It was late. Extremely late. She had to get home right away!

As she turned away and rushed for home, her teacher turned his head to face her for a moment, before he smiled and turned back to the task he now shared with his male student.

-x--x--x-

The next day, the young Hyuuga arrived at the training grounds to find the rest of her team already there.

"Oh… I'm sorry! I… I didn't realise that I was late."

Tenten shook her head as she practiced hurling various weapons – shuriken, kunai, kama and more – at various targets scattered in the surrounding trees. "You're not late. We're not supposed to meet for another thirty minutes or so. I just thought that I'd get in an hour or so of personal practice on my own techniques before we moved onto team things."

Lee, who was nearby doing push ups while also watching Gai do chin ups on a low and sturdy tree branch, nodded. "I too always try to greet an early day and start my morning exercises by no later than 5 am. If I can not, then I shall do an extra 1000 squats!"

For a moment Hinata couldn't help but smile at Lee's self-rule. He must have stayed up far later than her if he had joined their teacher in his hand-walking, but he was still here happy, eager, and early. Her face fell a little as she considered his efforts. Perhaps arriving at 6:30am was not as early as she had thought.

"But then, neither of us has a family style to learn like you do," Tenten quickly added when she saw Hinata's fallen facial expression. "We understand if you have to spend time at home practicing with the other Hyuugas."

"Ah. Yes." Or rather, no. It was true that the early part of the morning was spent on training and sparring in the Hyuuga clan dojo, but in the past few years her father had spent less and less time with her as he focussed more on her sister Hanabi. One day last year Hinata had badly overslept when she was up late the night before studying for the end of year Academy exams, and had missed the morning training session. Her father had not said a word about the matter during breakfast that morning – not even when she'd tried apologising for the matter.

After that, she was mostly ignored during the training sessions. Even Hanabi rarely fought her any more in sparring matches. Eventually she had stopped attending the morning sessions, replacing it with self-lead after school sessions in the outer Hyuuga training grounds when they were (thankfully, she guiltily thought to herself) empty.

Maybe Neji was right – maybe she was spoiled if she couldn't even wake up early enough to show the same level of drive as her team.

"Yosh!" Gai shouted as he finished his exercises. "It is good to see you all here bright and early! While Konoha still lies sleeping in its bed, here you all are ready to improve yourselves. Mark it well my students, for this is the power of the springtime of your youth!"

Hinata felt her spirits rise for a moment at the impassioned respect she heard in her teacher's voice, before it all crashed down again when she remembered how much earlier everyone else was.

"Well then," Gai continued, "how about we start with some simple warm up exercises?"

-x--x--x-

Hinata collapsed to her knees, desperately drawing in ragged breaths of air. To her left, Tenten was hunched over with her hands on her knees. To her right, Lee was breathing a bit louder than normal but was otherwise fine – he was even happily grinning. She successfully fought the urge to groan in pain, but only because groaning would have required expelling precious oxygen.

This was a simple warm up? She felt like she was going to die. If her legs and arms were threatening to turn to jelly after what he defined as a simple warm up, she was dreading what they would be doing next.

After giving them a minute to recover, Gai nodded. "Good, good. Now, I think I should see you all spar so that I can assess your training needs. Lee, show us what you can do-" His eyes sidled over Hinata, whose face was still red from exertion. "-against Tenten."

"Yes Sensei!" Lee eagerly agreed while Tenten straightened and acknowledged her teacher with a nod.

-x--x--x-

To the less observant, Gai was focussed on his two genin as they sparred against each other. While he certainly was looking at the pair, he had placed himself so that his attention could also rest on his third team member.

It did not take him long to see that she flinched every time Lee or Tenten scored even a minor hit on each other. As the battle grew more heated, with neither genin wanting to look bad for their first fight in front of their sensei, Gai's eyes narrowed. As the hits grew harder, Hinata's body movements grew more jerky. It took him a few moments before realisation dawned on him – she was holding herself back from stopping the fight. After thinking about her reactions, he came to a decision. "Alright, halt! Good effort, both of you."

The two genin broke off their attacks and looked expectantly at their teacher.

Gai looked at his most timid student for a moment, before he walked to the nearest tree and casually picked up a thick, sturdy branch that had broken off sometime in the recent past.

"Tenten, come here."

The bun-haired kunoichi hesitantly approached. "Yes Sensei?"

He passed her the branch. "Here, I wish to demonstrate something. Hit me as hard as you can on my torso with that. I want you to hold nothing back."

Tenten hesitated, looking from the branch in her hands and back to her instructor. "Sensei, are you sure?"

Gai grinned as he puffed his chest and placed his fists on his hips. "Absolutely!"

Flinching slightly at the idea of assaulting her teacher, Tenten nevertheless drew her arms back and slammed the branch into his stomach.

He didn't even flinch, although his gaze did turn a little disappointed. "Tenten, you will never bloom into the flower of your youth if you do not follow your team leader's instructions. Please do it again, and this time do not hold back."

Tenten's eyes narrowed, her pride as a kunoichi slightly wounded by his complete disregard of her attack. She hefted the branch, measuring its weight and heft and comparing it to other blunt weapons she had wielded. "Fine. Here we go!"

The air reverberated with a crack as she broke the branch against his chest. Silence then followed the blow for a few seconds after.

"He did not even move a muscle," Lee muttered, looking at their sensei in respect.

"Ha! Very good, Tenten!" Gai nodded. "As you can see, I can take some damage without any problem. You do not have to worry about hurting me. For that reason, you shall always hold nothing back when you spar with me."

The three genin replied with a chorused "Yes Sensei."

"Good." Gai gestured to the youngest member of their team. "Now, Hinata, I want you to spar with me."

Hinata swallowed, before timidly nodding.

-x--x--x-

The spar had lasted five minutes so far, with Gai dodging each of her strikes and offering no attack in return. She hadn't come close to hitting him, and she was starting to slow as her low confidence fell even lower.

Gai put less and less effort into each of his dodges as her attacks grew sloppier and slower, before he couldn't take it any more. "Come now Hinata, I know you can do more! As your sensei, I promise you this: if you do not give your all in this fight then I have failed you as a teacher, and I will climb the Hokage mountain 1000 times while using only my lips and teeth to pull me up!" To seal his promise, he managed to smile and give her a thumbs-up even while dodging her attacks.

Hinata's eyes widened, and she pulled back from the fight for a moment. Climb a mountain using only your mouth? That was impossible, wasn't it? Her doubt wavered when she saw the serious look on his face, and as she remembered his drive to complete his last promise. How long would it take to do something like that?

Gai smile widened as his opponent's eyes narrowed and she shifted into a new stance. Before he could blink, she was attacking him twice as fast as before. "Yosh! You're doing better, Hinata, but you're still not there! Give it your all! Show us the springtime of your youth!"

Hinata felt her desperation mount as he continued to evade her attack with apparent ease. He still didn't think she was trying! That meant he would still try climbing the mountain. If the villagers laughed at him for walking on his hands, then how much humiliation would he face because of her if he had to complete his promise?

Lee and Tenten looked on in surprise as Hinata moved faster again, her chakra now supplementing her physical speed.

"I do not understand why her academy rank was not higher if she could fight like this," Lee noted to his bun-haired teammate while never taking his eyes off the match.

Tenten shook her head. "She never fought like this at the Academy. Not that I saw, anyway."

It still wasn't enough! What if he fell when he was near the top, and refused to grab at a handhold because he promised not to use his hands? He could die! No, she had to try her best! Hinata drew deep within herself as she remembered the one technique she knew which could go faster. Due to her being shunned in the Hyuuga spars she had never attempted it on a live opponent before, but she had to stop Gai from enacting his promise. The Hyuuga girl jumped back from her sensei to gain some space.

Gai blinked. "Yosh. Are you finished? If so, then-"

"No! I…I can't let you risk that mountain! Byakugan!" Hinata stared at him for a moment. "I…I'm sorry, sensei. You are in range of my divination," she whispered before darting forward.

Gai's smile slipped, a serious expression taking over as he began deflecting her arms rather than dodging. Her soft words barely reached his ears as she whispered her attack. "Two Strikes. Four strikes. Eight Strikes." Her hands were moving in blurs, but so were Gai's as he deflected her attacks. "Sixteen Strikes. Thirty-two strikes. Sixty-four strikes."

Silence stretched over the battlefield in the aftermath of her attack. Hinata gasped for breath, her chakra stores heavily depleted. Her teacher looked at her with a calm expression. He shook his hands a few times as if getting rid of some pins-and-needles, but otherwise seemed unaffected. "Hinata?"

Hinata got her breath under control before hesitantly responding. "Yes, Sensei?"

"Your explosion of youth was beautiful to behold! Well done, Hinata!" Gai smiled, tears in his eyes, before hugging her in a fit of teacherly pride.

Hinata flailed her arms ineffectually as she tried to escape the hug. "G…Gai-sensei," she weakly protested.

"Hinata!"

Hinata's flailing slowed as the warm hug continued. Was this what an embrace from a person who cared about you felt like? Her clan was not known for affection. Her mother had stopped hugging her when she had begun her Jyuken training at age three – she really couldn't remember them any more. If her father had ever hugged her, it was before she was old enough to recall.

She had seen other parents when they picked up their children from the Academy. Even as Neji drew her away, she had glimpsed mothers or fathers hugging their kid as the child regaled them of their accomplishments in classes. She had noticed how even the most rough-and-tumble of boys and trying-to-act-like-an-adult girls would melt into their parent's hugs even as they loudly protested the public embarrassment. Hinata had often wondered what it would feel like to be hugged like that by a loving parent.

It probably felt something like this. She could feel the warm contact from the hug tearing at her loneliness and lack of affection. Tears collected in her eyes and she choked back a sob as her arms hesitated for a moment before they started to return the hug. "Gai-sensei!"

"Hinata!"

Lee looked on, smiling, while Tenten stared wide-eyed at the sunset that was somehow acting as a morning backdrop to her teacher and her fellow female student.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Lavender Beast of Konoha**

**Summary:** In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger when she graduates? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, and Hinata. Gen for now.

**Disclaimer:** Naruto was created by Kishimoto Masashi. No disrespect is intended in its use.

-x--x--x-

_You all fail._

He stood there in the clearing, staring at the sky while ignoring a nearby girl as she helped a second boy get free of the ropes that had tied him to one of three tall training posts

_None of you are fit to be ninja._

In the distance, his keen eyes spotted the shape of a falcon, soaring freely on the thermals generated by the Hokage mountain. Fascinated, the boy focussed on the bird. He did not acknowledge the other two children when they left for the village, nor did he take notice of their slumped posture and angry mutterings.

_You should all quit now and become civilians._

Absently he activated his bloodline limit, extending the limits of what he could see to the point where he could clearly make out the proud bird of prey and, after a moment, the tassels on its legs. He watched as it swooped down upon the roof of a distant high-rise apartment building and onto the arm of its waiting shinobi master. As its owner drew a leather hood over the hunting bird's head, he deactivated his doujutsu.

_Especially you, Neji._

Eyes flashing, he pivoted and struck the trunk of the nearest post with his palm. His strike barely left a mark on the area he touched, but the opposite side of the battered column exploded outwards in a shower of wood chips and chakra.

-x--x--x-

That night, Hinata lay in her bed, thinking. After several minutes, she reached for her clock and set its alarm to an hour earlier. She stared at the clock face.

Arriving that early would mean skipping breakfast with her family. But if everyone else was there so early, then wasn't she letting her team down by arriving later? On the other hand, she had never missed the family breakfast – not even that one time when she had missed the pre-breakfast training session. Deliberately missing it may result in the disapproval of her father.

Hinata thought about it, her mind running around in circles as she cringed away from the thought of disobeying her father. Finally, her thoughts skipped back to her sensei making his promise to that silver-haired jounin the day before. He had kept his word to himself and did it with a smile on his face. Maybe… maybe that was it. Maybe if she made it worse to not arrive early then it would be to stay…?

But what would she rather not face than her father's displeasure? Nothing horrible enough came to mind, but Gai had said that the self-rule was an opportunity to improve yourself even if you failed. She thought about the worst exercise she had ever done at the Academy, and doubled the largest amount of repetitions that she had ever done of it. It wasn't perfect, but maybe it was a start.

"If I arrive for training tomorrow any later than 5:30am, then I shall do four hundred crunches," she whispered to herself, nodding once to affirm her declaration, before she placed the clock down and settled down to sleep.

-x--x--x-

The Sandaime leaned back in his chair and sighed as he placed the last of his paperwork onto a pile so that it would be ready for processing on the next day. "You know, this job is already stressful enough without you adding to it."

Kakashi looked away from his book and up at the old man, but otherwise didn't move away from leaning against the wall. "Mmm, sorry about that. I take it that Hiashi wasn't happy?"

The Hokage shook his head. "Branch House or not, Neji is seen as a genius in the Hyuuga clan. From the Hyuuga point of view, saying that a genius of their clan is not fit to be a genin is a powerful insult. I'm hoping that you have sound reasoning for doing it, or else I'll never hear the end of this from them."

The silver-haired jounin slowly closed his book before he turned a serious gaze on his leader. "The kid could fight, there's no disputing that. But he's a miserable failure when it comes to teamwork. From what I saw, if a teammate of his were ever captured he'd probably leave them to die and say it was their fate. Trust me, he's not ready to be on a squad."

"All right." Sarutobi tapped his pipe, before filling and lighting it. "Just don't be surprised if you get a few glares from the Hyuuga clan members over the next few days. Especially when Gai also passed a team with Hyuuga Hinata on it."

"Hinata? The supposed clan failure?" Kakashi blinked. "And my now, Gai passed a team? Hasn't he failed more teams than I have? I was beginning to think it was one of his challenges that he made when I wasn't listening."

"Yes, well it appears that he thought there was something special about this year's crop."

-x--x--x-

Lee blinked, pausing in his morning leg kicks to watch as Hinata dashed into the training clearing. Smiling at her enthusiasm, he waved in greeting before returning to his exercise.

Hinata waved in return as she caught her breath. Checking the small watch that was concealed under her jacket, she saw that it was 5:29am. She slowly gasped out in relief. She had made it, despite being delayed by the Hyuuga gate guards who had wanted to know where she was going so early. She didn't think she'd ever run that fast in her life, and it was only her deep dislike for the crunch exercise that had kept her aching leg muscles pumping so fast. Gai-sensei was right, she had made it here in time only because she had made not making it an even worse proposition. Focussing on her desire to avoid the exercise had even allowed her to not think about her father's reaction to skipping the family breakfast.

Realising her mind was returning to dangerous thoughts, she quickly began painful hand-striking exercises against a training log to try and clear her mind of thoughts about what may happen when she reached home.

Twenty minutes later, Tenten walked into the clearing. Seeing her two teammates, she waved and asked "Morning! So, did you hear?"

Hinata blinked, stopping her practice strikes while Lee paused in the middle of his sit-ups. They looked at each other, puzzled, before turning back to their teammate.

"I guess not," Tenten noted as she interpreted their looks. "You're not going to believe this: we're the only team that passed!"

"Only team?" Lee shook his head. "I am sorry, I do not understand. We are the only team that passed what?"

Tenten threw up her hands. "The only team that passed their jounin's test. My dad got congratulated on my behalf by some of his shinobi customers. We're supposed to be the only team from our year that's still a team!"

"Only?" Hinata paused. "N…no. That's im… that's impossible. Neji couldn't have failed. It's… that just couldn't happen."

Lee shook his head. "I do not understand – what test? We did not go through any test."

Strong laughter rang from above. "But that is where you are wrong, Lee!" Gai's voice rang out as he leapt from a nearby tree.

The three genin looked at their instructor, before Tenten gathered the courage to ask, "Then when was our test, sir?"

"Hmm." Gai considered the question. "Were you aware that I have known of each of you for much longer than two days? You, Lee, I spotted first when I was at the Academy scouting the graduating genin three years ago. When everyone else had left, you were still there trying your hardest to perform ninjutsu. You may remember that I spoke to you back then."

Lee nodded. "I still remember your words to this day, Gai-sensei! I am still aiming to be a great ninja, just as you said!"

"Yosh! And you, Tenten - it did not take me long after that to also notice your dedication to your craft. At one of the Academy training grounds I saw you hurling weapon after weapon into the target, even as your fingers trembled and bled from use."

Tenten blushed, looking at the ground as she kicked at a nearby stone. "It took me a while to develop my calluses," she admitted.

"As for you, Hinata." Gai folded his arms. "I admit, your determination was like a flower in winter – hiding in the snow until it could bloom in the fullness of spring. However, luckily I like to change training grounds occasionally to ensure that I practice in every possible surrounding. One of those training grounds borders on the outer Hyuuga training areas. It was during my time there, late at night, that I saw you practicing much in the same way that you practiced this morning. It was obvious you were in pain from extended training, but still you performed strike after strike onto your training log."

Hinata blushed, embarrassed over being spied upon.

"And that is the truth of it," Gai noted. "You garnered my approval years ago. Your passing mark was based on a test of your determination to succeed. Each of you is my precious student due to the flaming spark of youth that I saw on those days. Never doubt that so long as you can maintain and grow this spark until it is a raging fire, then each of you is worthy to wear Konoha's mark."

-x--x--x-

Hinata slowly shuffled into her clan's main courtyard, every muscle screaming at her as she moved. On their first day training as a team, they had spent most of their time being evaluated. On the second day - today - they had started seriously training. Her teacher demanded a lot from his students – she couldn't deny that. He had pushed them each to their limits, and once they reached that he kept on pushing until they went beyond what they thought they could do. She was, of course, the first one to reach their limit. Tenten lasted much longer than her, the bun-haired girl simply attributing it to all of the physical training she did in order to wield her heavy weapons. Lee easily outdid them both, smiling all the way.

She probably could not have managed Gai's workload – especially when she saw how far behind the others she was – if it wasn't for his glowing encouragement every time she began to falter. Not once had she seen recrimination or disappointment in his eyes when she slowed or stopped and he was always ready to offer advice or a kind word when she did something wrong. He was so very different to the teachers in her clan, and for the first time in her life she found herself looking forward to waking up and going to training tomorrow morning.

She stopped as the sound of palms hitting the practice posts in the Branch's training yard reached her ears. Both the Main and Branch training yards were built off the main courtyard in order to increase the chances of having battle-ready Hyuuga on hand should their gates be breached. Despite this original design concept, most Hyuuga practiced during the morning or day, not in the evenings, giving any invader a large window of opportunity to attack while the area was nearly empty. Curious about the noise, she shuffled down the linking corridor that led to the grounds.

She stopped when she saw her cousin standing in front of a training post with his back to her. Every two seconds he would strike the post, alternating hands with each strike. Each slap of his palm resounded in the courtyard, indicating that his chakra-less palm strikes were being delivered with far more force than usual for the Hyuuga's Jyuken style.

Hesitantly, she took a step towards the boy, her arm rising as she prepared to say hello. Her voice died in her throat when she saw his strikes becoming faster and harsher, and the certainty struck her that he knew she was there. For a few moments, she struggled with herself, wanting to talk to her cousin but knowing he didn't want to speak to her. Her arm finally dropped, her shoulders slumping, as she acceded to his silent demand to be left alone.

Taking one last glance at her cousin, she turned and headed to her room.

-x--x--x-

Gai looked on as his students worked on their two-on-one sparring. This was something that was not taught at the academy, as all sparring there was one-on-one. In his opinion, it was an absolute necessity for any genin to have experience in it before they began taking missions. While it was extremely rare, there had been some D-rank assignments had been upgraded higher due to bandit ambush, ninja attack, or (in one of his own more memorable experiences) a drunken bar brawl that had spilled out onto the streets.

He could not have, in good conscience, allowed his energetic students to participate in missions until they had some measure of experience in tackling multiple foes. It didn't matter how strong you were – if you hadn't learned to guard your back, then even the most inept of bandits could stab you when you were otherwise occupied.

The other advantage to this type of training was that Hinata had a clear advantage in it due to her Byakugan. He hoped that allowing her victories now would help her in her confidence later, when they moved onto topics where she was not the most skilled of his students.

In truth, Hinata was not his only concern. There was a lot of work required of all of his pupils before they would be able to hold their heads high as respected youths of this village. His fellow jounin were puzzled over why he had taken on these three as his charges – in their eyes he had recruited three losers on his team. But what he had told the genin was true – he was convinced that he could turn each of them into geniuses of hard work after seeing their determination. Yes, Lee required much more training. Yes, Hinata required much more confidence. Yes, Tenten required much more variety or volume to her ranged attacks if they were ever to be effective.

But that was the difference between himself and the jounin that had questioned him. They saw his students as barren seedlings buried in uncultivated ground. He saw them as the strong and vibrant flowers that they would grow into, given the right care.

Gai nodded. "Very well – stop!"

Lee and Tenten disengaged from Hinata, who then deactivated her bloodline. They all turned to their teacher and waited for the words they had wanted to hear for many days.

"It has been two weeks now – I think you are ready for your first mission."

-x--x--x-

The tranquillity of the dense forest was interrupted by the crackling of microphone chatter. "Crane here. I am leading the target towards you. Are you ready? Please report."

"Tiger is in position, Crane-san."

"You really don't need to add an honorific to a codename, Lee… I mean, Tiger. Dragon, are you in position?" The radios fell into silence for a few moments. "Dragon? Dragon? Hinata!"

Hinata started, almost falling out of her tree. Quickly raising her hand and pressing the headpiece's activation button, she answered, "S… sorry. Dragon is in position." She took her hand off the activation button, hesitated, and pressed it again. "Um… I don't suppose I could… er… change my codename? P…please?"

"Hey, you said whatever codename I chose would be fine. You can change it next mission. Now get ready, target will be there very soon. Crane out."

"It's… it's just that I don't really feel like a dragon and I was w…wondering if a more suitable name would be-" Hinata paused as she saw a blur of motion below her. She hesitated, cringing at her mistake, before reluctantly activating her microphone. "Um… target has escaped my position. It's heading for y…you, Tiger-san. I'm s…sorry! I'm really sorry!"

"Do not worry, Dragon-san – I will get him!"

Hinata raced after their quarry as the sounds of a horrific battle echoed over her earpiece. Lee must have somehow stuck his send button in the active position. Her eyes widened when she heard a short scream echo over the radio network before she crashed through into the clearing that Lee had been covering.

She was about to activate her Byakugan when she noticed several leaves falling from the tree in front of her. Blinking, she quickly looked up and stared at her male teammate. Lee was hanging upside down, his left leg caught between two twisted branches. He looked at her for a moment, flushed with embarrassment. "That was no ordinary cat, Hinata-san."

Hinata blinked again. "H… here! Let me help you."

Lee shook his head. "No, I shall be fine. I shall escape this predicament myself, or I will do 200 push-ups." He tugged at his leg a few times before frowning. "250 push-ups, then." He tried frantically slashing at the twisted branch with a kunai, but couldn't bend his body well enough to apply any real cutting power. "Alright, 300 push-ups!"

Tenten rolled her eyes as she entered the clearing, before she pulled a kama out of a weapon's belt that she had worn for the mission. Testing the weight of the sickle-like weapon for a moment, she nodded before quickly throwing it. Lee paled for a moment when he saw the blade land less than a fingers-breadth from his ankle with a loud 'thunk', before gravity caused him to fall to the ground in a heap, a severed branch landing next to him.

The weapons girl quickly jumped into the tree, retrieving the kama and holstering it. "Come on you two, we have to get moving. Our money is getting away!"

Lee groaned, trying to work the kinks out of his neck as he painfully pulled himself off the ground. "I am sorry, Tenten-san, I did not catch that."

"I said our quarry is getting away. Come on. Hinata!"

Hinata started. "Y… yes?"

"Can you see it anywhere?"

"Oh. Right! Byakugan!" After a few seconds of concentrating on her doujutsu, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head.

"Well then, we shall simply have to find it again." Lee punctuated his declaration with a raised fist.

"Fine. We should split up." Tenten pointed to their left. "I'll take this way."

"Yosh! In that case I will head to the east! Good luck!"

Hinata blinked as her teammates disappeared into the surrounding foliage. She fidgeted for a few moments, before squaring her shoulders. "Um… I guess I'll take this way, then," she murmured to herself before striking out in a third direction.

-x--x--x-

Hinata stared at the reddening dusk skyline for a moment before returning to her task. Since she had parted from her team, she had been following a routine. Activate her bloodline limit, quickly examine the surrounding area before deactivating the doujutsu, walk forward 100 metres, and then try again.

After many hours of doing this, her chakra reserves were now close to failing. The Byakugan was very chakra intensive – both seeing and interpreting so much visual data at once was extremely taxing on the eyes and mind. The veins that protruded around a Byakugan user's eyes were a visual clue to the strain that its use placed on the body. It was part of the reason why the Hyuuga had exclusively developed a close quarters fighting style rather than also mixing in genjutsu or ninjutsu – their attacks were designed to take down an opponent with fast, brutal strikes so that their doujutsu could be turned off as quickly as possible.

Hinata's chakra reserves were not small for her age, but over the past six hours she had used her doujutsu hundreds of times. Even though she had rationed her bloodline activation to quick, seconds-long bursts, she was beginning to tire.

She'd thought of quitting the mission – she'd thought of it a lot. But every time her hand drifted to her microphone's on button, either Tenten or Lee would report in - sometimes catching hints of their quarry but never actually sighting it. They were trying their hardest - they'd surely never forgive her if she quit.

Trudging forward, she slowly joined her hands in a seal. "Byakugan!" Her chakra moved sluggishly as her eyesight slowly expanded – much too slowly, the activation should be nigh instantaneous. Taking that as a warning sign of chakra depletion, she quickly deactivated her doujutsu.

Slowly, she made her way to the nearest tree and sat down, her back sliding against it as she went down. "I am such a failure," she whispered to herself as she buried her head in her hands.

After a few seconds, she felt the tree shudder a little. Startled, she looked up to see her sensei leaning against her tree, his arms crossed.

"Do you know, this kind of reminds me of my first mission," Gai noted. He waited a few seconds for a response, which the wide-eyed Hyuuga did not give, before he continued. "Back in those days, we were at war with Iwa and to a lesser extent Kumo as well. Most children were rushed through the academy – even someone like me, who was dead last in their class, graduated at the age of seven."

Hinata looked at him in disbelief. Dead last? Him?

Gai smiled at her look. "It's true - it took a lot of hard work on my part before I blossomed into the springtime of my youth and became a competent ninja. As I was saying, because of the war, my first mission was a C-class escort mission." His eyes lost their focus for a moment in remembrance. "We were ambushed during our convoy duty. I had to carry both of my unconscious teammates back to Konoha as my sensei covered us."

Gai shook his head, as if to shake away his memories. "Once we were back and recovered, our sensei showed us what we did wrong. We trained until we had eradicated that weakness, and we were never caught like that again." Gai paused, and looked at her. "My point in telling you this, Hinata, is that failure is inevitable as you learn the ways of the world. The mark of a good ninja is not to avoid failure. It is to work that failure into victory the next time you are in the same situation. This is your greatest advantage – your youth allows you to adapt and improve from failure in ways that the old can never accomplish. Grasp that opportunity in both hands and you can charge into a bright future!"

Hinata thought about it for a moment, before nodding and getting up. "Yes. Th..thank you, Gai-sensei, y…you're right."

"Yosh." Gai activated his headset. "Team, this is Phoenix. It is time to regroup. Converge at Point D."

"Sir," Lee's voice crackled over the headsets. "Does that mean we have failed the mission?"

"Of course not!" Everyone winced as Gai's shout caused loud feedback into their earpieces. "We have merely learned of one way to not succeed. We shall meet, talk about what we can do differently to ensure our success, and retake the mission tomorrow."

-x--x--x-

They travelled in silence for a few minutes. Despite Gai's speech, Hinata's head was hung low as she considered her failure in the mission. If she had only paid more attention at the start, they might have finished successfully hours ago. It was all her fault that their very first mission would be marked as a failure.

Hinata twitched as she heard a faint sound "D…did you hear that?"

Gai's eyebrows rose. "Did I hear what, Hinata?"

The sound came again, a little more distinct.

"I… I think it's coming from over there." Hinata hesitated as she looked to her teacher for guidance.

"Really? Well then, what would you like to do about it?"

Hinata hesitated, her eyes shifting in several directions to avoid his gaze. While she was trying her best to answer, Lee stumbled through some nearby bushes. Gratefully taking the distraction, she opened her mouth to greet the boy, but stopped when she saw her instructor's heavy gaze was still upon her rather than moving on to his male student.

"Hmm." Gai crossed his arms. "There was some advice I was once given that I have always felt was right. I was told that a ninja should never listen to his heart, because it will lie and tell you that your enemy is your friend. A ninja should never listen to his mind because it will trap you in a web of self-doubts, what ifs and maybes. Do you know then, Hinata, what a ninja should listen to?"

Hinata shook her head. Lee, meanwhile, had pulled out his notebook and was looking expectantly at his teacher.

"A ninja listens to their gut! Your instincts will lead you through dangers where your heart and mind would fail. Ignore everything else, and always listen to your gut. So tell me, my student, what does your gut tell you?"

"Well, um, m…my gut tells me that may… maybe we should ch…check it out? P…possibly?" Her stomach gurgled, causing her face to flush red with mortification. "A…and that I didn't pack enough lunch," she admitted, hanging her head to stare at the ground.

Gai chuckled. "Well then, lead the way!"

"M…me? Sh…shouldn't you lead, sensei?"

"You are the one who heard the sound that my unyouthful ears did not. I shall have to rely on you to guide us."

"But… but I'm not s…sure which way I-"

"Then listen to your gut, and use it to pick your way!"

Hinata gulped.

Lee smiled and added, "I do not know what is going on, but I know that you can do it, Hinata-san!"

Closing her eyes to concentrate, her shaking finger slowly pointed out a direction. "Th…that way. I think."

"Don't think, Hinata, feel!"

The Hyuuga girl nodded. "Th…then it's that way. I'm sure… um… maybe."

"Yosh! In that case, lead on."

They broke out into a jog as they travelled towards the noise. The team barely registered the sight of their last missing member as they rushed past Tenten. As Hinata drew closer, the sound slowly clarified into the desperate mewlings of a cat. Hearing that pitiful sound, she broke into a worried run. After a few more seconds, she skidded to a halt as she spotted the animal.

The cat was hanging off a branch that had clearly snapped underneath it, its forepaws desperately scrabbling for purchase on the slippery, moss-covered bark of a tall tree. She looked down for a second, to take in the ravine that the tree hung over, before looking up in time to see one of its paws lose its purchase, with the other paw starting to detach as the cat began to fall.

A few moments later, she found herself upside down, hanging from the tree branch as she used her Hyuuga-trained chakra control to stick her feet to the wood as the startled cat squirmed in her outstretched hands. Hinata blinked, not quite sure how she got there for a moment, before she was hit with an almost out-of-body recollection of using her chakra to run up the tree and upside-down underneath the branch, before catching the falling cat. To her, they almost felt like someone else's memories. What had possessed her to do this?

-x--x--x-

In her heart, Hinata had always liked animals. As their supposed heiress, the other Hyuuga felt that she should have no time for pets, and so she had no choice but to observe animals from afar. In her first year she had stared, enthralled, at the messenger birds that were brought to their classes to show them how the village communicated with distant ninja. In her second year at the academy, she had spent most lunches of the last term hiding behind a tree as she watched the frolicking of a puppy that a final-year Inuzuka girl had started bringing to school.

In her third year, Neji and her had taken a different route to the academy for a month due to their usual road being blocked by the construction of a new building On that new route, they regularly walked past an alley filled with dumpsters used by the surrounding restaurants. It was there that she saw it for the first time.

That first time, as she walked by, her head had turned at the sound of clattering bin lids. Atop one of the bins, a fish's head firmly in its jaws, was a black and white cat. In that second it stared at her, eyes never wavering, before she was subtly nudged out of sight of the alleyway by her cousin.

Hinata had been fascinated, and always recalled that stare. That scrawny cat, obviously a stray and living off the garbage of others, had given a look of such fearless pride that it took her breath away. From that day forward, she had always been enthralled by cats.

Neji would never have let her demean herself by petting a filthy and perhaps even diseased animal in public, but he made no comment when she would slow her walk to a crawl whenever they passed the cat. In return, she never interrupted him when he was staring at the sky, watching sparrows in flight.

One day, as they neared the alleyway, she could hear the mixed sounds of two animals' growls. Worried that the cat may have come to harm, she had raced forwards, not even hearing her cousin's startled cautionary cry to stop. When she reached the alley's entrance, she skidded to a halt and stared, fascinated at the confrontation that she saw.

She had always heard that cats feared dogs, but this was a feral alley cat used to taking care of itself, while the dog was a pampered family pet that had escaped its nearby owner's backyard. She could only watch in rapt admiration, not even hearing her cousin's insistence that they move on, as the small feline puffed itself up, hissing and yowling until it scared the much larger canine into backing away and running off.

She had found herself being envious of that cat. As a stray, it was free of all obligations, able to go where it wanted, do what it wanted, and holding the sheer spit and vigour to scare off anything that would get in its way.

But in the end, she was not a cat with spit and vigour, and did not protest when Neji suggested they return to their normal route when the building work ended.

-x--x--x-

The branch sagged as it bent under Hinata's weight. Shifting nervously, she dug her hands further under the animal's forelegs in order to get a better grip. "Shh, I've got you," she whispered, and was pleased to see the cat slightly relax.

Tora, the pampered pet of the fire lord's wife, was not the same cat as the one from that alleyway. But in the last moment before rushing up the tree, she saw its frantic scrambling and witnessed how it still fought with everything it had to save its own life even while it was completely terrified. It was that tenacity that had reminded her of the alley cat. Maybe, in the end, Hinata had found herself acting before thinking simply because she just couldn't bear to see determination like that be snuffed from this world.

Her heartbeat started to slow as relief of the last-second rescue flooded her systems. Below her she could see her teammates, Tenten on one side of the tree, Lee and Gai on the other. She was about to smile at them when she felt herself tiring. Her eyes widened in horror as she realised that it had been her adrenaline rush that had been providing her tired system with its temporary chakra boost. Her panic only increased as she felt her chakra flow destabilise. Doing her best to stifle her alarm, she tried to draw on her near-nonexistent reserves but it was too late. Her feet detached from the branch, and since she had been upside down using chakra rather than a physical handhold, she no longer had anything to grab onto.

Hinata felt a stab of vertigo as she rushed towards the ground. Acting more on instinct than active thought, she quickly pulled the cat up and cradled it as she fell, while trying to turn and right herself so that she could survive the drop. She knew she wouldn't be able to get in a good enough position in time without leverage, though, so she was surprised when she felt a moment of weightlessness as something started supporting her body.

"Got you!" Tenten exclaimed, her jumping grab sending the two kunoichi on an angle away from the ravine.

"Do not worry, I will catch you both!" Lee shouted, legs pumping as he raced out in front of them while desperately holding out his arms. His female teammates had a moment to wince before they smashed into Lee, their combined momentum causing them all to tumble heavily to the ground.

"Yosh!" Gai beamed as he walked up to and looked down at the groaning pile of bodies. "Now that is teamwork!"

The green-clad jounin gently lifted the top body – Hinata - off the pile and placed the girl on her feet. "Do you see?" he asked as the cat staggered out of the body pile and collapsed onto the ground in a daze. "If you had not listened to your gut, then this lucky animal may have suffered some type of injury. Always listen to your gut, Hinata, it won't steer you wrong."

Hinata hesitated, before nodding

And then fainting.

-x--x--x-

The three genin were slowly limping down the street, the shortest female supported by her taller female and male teammates. Their strangely dressed instructor walked by their side, an unconscious cat draped over his shoulder. As they passed a roadside eating establishment, a young chuunin looked up from his ramen while his younger companion stared out from behind his back.

"Oh boy," Iruka muttered to himself as he spotted the ribbon on the cat's ear and remembered some of his old missions before the time he reached the chuunin level. "I don't think the Fire Lord's wife is going to be happy about this one."

"Hey, hey, Iruka," Naruto tugged on his teacher's sleeve. "What happened to them?"

"I don't know, Naruto. They're the newest genin team – I think they went on their first mission today."

"That was because of their first mission?" Naruto leaned out of his chair to look at the walking wounded as they shuffled off. "Ahh, so cool! I'm definitely going to become a ninja in next year's class, so I can go on missions like that!"

-x--x--x-

After the minor diplomatic incident that Team 9 had sparked on their first mission (the Fire Lord's wife had indeed been not happy), the Hokage was more careful in his selection of their second. Something nice and easy would ease them into their new roles and help encourage their confidence for future tasks.

-x--x--x-

Hinata loved animals, true, but she usually loved them from a respectful distance. Seeing a dog from ten metres away was a cute and uplifting experience. Being a metre away from one that came up to her shoulder while trying to walk it was another. She hadn't spoken up as Gai, Lee and Tenten had chosen their canine companions for this D-rank mission, and so she had somehow found herself with the leash of the last choice in her hand.

Her dog had more in common with a bear than anything else. It was huge and broad, with its shoulders and legs packed with underlying muscle. She couldn't quite squash the thought that all it would take for the beast to turn and devour her would be for someone to shout out something like 'Wolfsie! Kibbles!'

Hinata was not having much success in walking it, either, as it was capable (and willing) of dragging her wherever it wanted to go. She had rapidly dropped behind the others, to the point where she couldn't even see her teacher any more. The other two genin were closer, but still a fair distance away.

The large dog turned its head and grinned at her, displaying fangs the same length as her hands. With a strangled shout, Hinata let go of the leash and backed away from the animal as she slipped into a defensive stance. Seeing its moment of freedom at hand, the dog bounded away, barking happily as its leash trailed behind it. Hinata looked at it in horror as it disappeared into the nearby forest.

"What happened?"

Hinata turned to face her two teammates, who had raced back when they saw her dog bolt for freedom. "He g…got away," she answered Tenten.

Lee nodded. "Dogs do love to frolic," he noted as he tugged on his own leash to stop his dog wandering off. "Would you like us to help you retrieve it?"

"Yes!" Hinata shouted in relief, as she had been dreading the thought of trying to get the creature under control by herself. "I.. I mean, y…yes thank you," she murmured with a more normal voice tone.

-x--x--x-

"There you are," Gai noted as he walked up to his team while leading four dogs along. "Why are you all standing around? These noble beasts will not exercise themselves."

The team didn't answer, too absorbed in staring at the 'Danger! Minefield!' signs. Nearby, but out of sight amongst the trees, they heard a loud explosion.

"Hmm," Gai looked up at the cloud-less sky. "Thunder? Strange – it doesn't look like it will rain."

The three pre-teen ninja did their best to not look at each other and especially not look at their teacher as a faint repeating 'yipe-yipe-yipe' sound and the smell of burnt fur wafted towards them on the wind that was blowing from the same direction as the explosion.

"We're not going to get paid for this, are we? " Tenten muttered in resignation to Lee as Hinata stood there, shaking.

-x--x--x-

Sarutobi furrowed his eyebrows as he glanced at the village's newest genin team for a moment, before he consulted the D-rank scrolls. All right, it appeared that they were not the most suited team for missions involving animals. Perhaps a handyman task would be better suited to their talents?

-x--x--x-

"-and I guess you can paint the gate in red. Or green. Or whatever, it doesn't really matter as long as I don't have to do it."

Tenten looked at the brown-haired kid, who couldn't be any older than her, before she looked around for help from her teammates. Unfortunately, they'd already started inspecting the house while this kid had told them how he wanted it painted. "Say, aren't you a little young to be hiring ninjas?"

"Look, my dad's on a mission and my mom's at the markets. It's not my fault that I got stuck with this troublesome task while they're gone."

"Well, with your vague instructions you can see how I'd think this could be a prank, right? You know, pretend to be the owner's son and get the ninjas to paint some sucker's house while they're gone. Something like that."

"You can think what you like, I don't care. If you need me, I'll be on that hill over there watching the clou-"

There was a resounding 'clonk'. Tenten blinked as the boy collapsed to the ground, his impact cushioned by the grass. Looking around for reason for the kid's sudden collapse, she spotted a small, dented tin of paint. Having ascertained that they probably weren't under attack by enemy ninja, she quickly kneeled down to inspect him, putting her academy first aid training to use.

"Is he all right?"

Tenten looked up to see her teammates and instructor leaning over the roof's side. "I think it's just a mild concussion," she replied to Lee. "My father's taken much worse when I've roped him into being my training dummy. What happened?"

Hinata looked everywhere but her, obviously too embarrassed to explain. Lee rubbed the back of his neck, before admitting. "We were inspecting the roof when I noted that the guttering would contrast well with the roof if it was done in blue. Gai-sensei suggested that green would work better. Hinata-san then suggested that we use one of the sampler cans our clients owned to test out the two ideas and see which one worked better."

"I… I'm really sorry," Hinata interjected. "This is all my f…fault."

"Nonsense, Hinata." Gai reassured her. "The fault was entirely mine." He turned to Tenten and explained, "Lee asked for me to throw him one of the sampler cans, as I was near the supplies and he was close to the gutter. Naturally, I thought this would be a good training opportunity, so I threw it a little high to let him work on his jumps."

"I am sorry that I missed it, Sensei," Lee apologised with a hangdog expression.

"Don't worry, Lee. We'll view this as a good opportunity to increase your reflex exercises!"

Lee nodded. "Good idea, Gai-sensei!" He grinned at his teacher, who grinned back.

They stayed that way for a few moments before Hinata hesitantly interrupted. "Um… Should… shouldn't we take him to the hospital?"

Gai nodded, breaking his grinning contest with his male student. "Well put, Hinata. I shall do that while you three get started on your painting mission."

-x--x--x-

The Sandaime looked from the mission scrolls and back to Team 9. After mentally reviewing the team's records on collateral damage to the mission targets, he surreptitiously shuffled the childcare mission to the bottom of the pile.

-x--x--x-

'_Finally, a mission that can't go wrong,_' Tenten thought as she hefted her share of the paper shopping bags.

"Our…Our client seemed very nice. I hope his leg heals up s…soon." Hinata's voice was muffled by the large shopping bags that covered her face. Both Lee and Tenten had offered to take some bags off the small girl, but she had quietly insisted on taking an equal share. The two older genin had been so pleased at her standing up for herself that they didn't protest.

Presumably Hinata had activated the Byakugan to be able to see. Tenten hoped that the Hyuuga girl would be able to keep her doujutsu up without getting exhausted.

Lee might have been having similar thoughts, or he might have just been acting like Lee when he nodded and said, "You are right, Hinata-san. We should get these supplies back to him as quickly as possible so that he does not have to wait. I will get this shopping to him within two minutes or I shall skip rope 2000 times!"

The two girls blinked as Lee dashed off. Seconds later, they hard a crashing sound in the distance. Hinata, whose Byakugan was still active, turned to her remaining teammate and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "Tripped on a tree root."

Tenten sighed. Of course, Lee had been carrying the eggs and other breakables as well. Mission failed. Again. She was beginning to wonder if she'd ever get the money to buy that new set of kunai she needed.

-x--x--x-

"You shouldn't have to do this, Hinata." Tenten knew her heart wasn't into stopping the Hyuuga girl, but she had to try anyway. Maybe it would be better to fail a mission than complete it dishonestly like this.

"It…it's okay." Hinata handed her money to the store-owner, who looked very surprised to see them again so soon. Picking up the new bags of groceries, she turned to them. "Shall we g…go?"

Lee couldn't look at either of the girls as they exited the store. He had insisted on taking all the grocery bags (that did not contain breakable items) as atonement for almost failing their mission. "I will pay you back as soon as I can, Hinata-san, I promise you."

Tenten blinked as they walked back to their client. "Wait, no self-rule?"

Lee shook his head. "I could only impose a self-rule if there was a chance I could not complete my promise. This is not the case here, because there is no way that I will not keep my word."

-x--x--x-

After delivering the groceries to the grateful old man with the broken leg who had hired them, they returned to their usual training ground to wait for their instructor. Gai, who had been fixing some tiles on the old man's roof, arrived less than a minute after them.

"Well done, team 9, on a successful mission. Do you see how –"

"I am sorry to interrupt, Sensei," Lee spoke up, his head staring resolutely at the ground in front of him. "I wish to say something."

The girls and their teacher looked at Lee. After a moment, Gai nodded. "Go ahead, Lee."

"I am sorry Sensei, but we only completed that mission due to Hinata-san." He bowed low to them, and remained in that position with his face still looking at the ground. "I apologise very deeply. My rashness almost cost us another failed mission. I promise to try harder in the future."

"Lee, it's okay." Tenten put her hand on his left shoulder to reassure him.

Hinata tentatively copied her female teammate, placing her hand on Lee's right shoulder. "Y…you don't have anything to apologise for, L… Lee-san. I'm the one… I'm the one that is the screw up. I…I've failed or almost failed us on almost h…half our missions. I was too b…busy arguing over my codename to catch t…the cat. I was s…so scared of the dogs that mine slipped off his leash when we walked th…them. I slipped and al…almost drowned when we were weeding th…that pond. And… and… well, we promised to n…never discuss the lawn-mowing mission again, but that one t…too. I'm dragging you both down. I'm… I'm sorry I'm such a failure."

Tenten snorted. As Hinata looked at her in astonishment at her reaction she waved a hand. "Sorry, sorry. But that's ridiculous Hinata. Failure? You're the only one that Gai-sensei has to put any effort into dodging in our spars. You last twice as long as either Lee or me when we do two-on-one sparring. You might have lost that cat, but you're the one that found it again later on. You also breezed us through that mission where we had to keep that old lady some company for a few hours – I know that neither Lee or me had the patience to sit through her long stories. And you just saved our bacon on that mission back there. Face it Hinata – without you we would have failed a lot more than we have."

Lee vigorously nodded as he looked up at the Hyuuga girl. "She is right, Hinata-san! You have nothing to be sorry of. But when we became a team I promised to show that I could be an excellent ninja. So far, I have failed in that. Therefore…" He paused, looking at his teacher, before smiling. "Therefore, I promise that the next time I cause us to fail a mission, I will do 500 laps of Konoha on my hands." Grinning, he sealed his promise by posing like a nice guy.

Hinata looked at the smiling boy for a moment, before focussing on his thumbs-up. After a few seconds, her gaze moved to their sensei, who was looking on proudly. She hesitated for a few moments, before she raised her head to look Lee in the eyes. "If… If that is so, then…" She looked away for a moment, then looked back again. "Then I will too!" She raised her hand in her own thumbs-up, and smiled enough to show a little bit of teeth. She didn't manage a grin – she'd never done one, as such a frivolous expression would have been highly frowned upon in the Hyuuga clan.

"If… if I fail us another mission, I will… I will…" she faltered for a moment, thinking. What could she use that would improve her training if she failed, but be enough of a deterrent that it would stop her from ever failing in the first place? It would have to be something horrible. After a moment more, she rushed her next words before she could think about their implications, "I will challenge my father to a one-on-one match!" Her smile wavered for a moment as she started to think about what she had said, but returned when she saw the approval on Lee and Gai's faces.

Tenten blinked when they turned their gazes to her, as if expecting her to join them. "Um, I actually haven't really screwed up any of the missions yet," she reminded them. Seeing their downcast expressions, she bit back a groan of frustration. "But I'll try harder on future missions as well." Seeing their expressions hadn't changed, she gritted her teeth. "Alright, alright! I can't believe I'm doing this. Ahem – and if I don't I'll do something-er-ather for so many times." With that, she gave a half-hearted thumbs-up, while half-smiling, half-gritting her teeth.

"Very good! So then, we shall consider it a team promise!" Gai nodded, showing his gleaming teeth in a wide smile as he added his thumbs-up to theirs. "Now then, let's get some more training in before we break for the day."

-x--x--x-

Gai nodded to his students as they finished the cool-down from their afternoon exercises.

"Good! As you know, part of being a ninja is attacking with the element of surprise. In that vein, and to celebrate our first team promise, today I am going to show you the first of my personal special techniques."

The three genins looked at each other, excitement etched on their faces, before they turned back to their sensei.

"At first glance this technique may seem simple, but it takes intense focus to achieve the correct timing. If you leave the verbal component too early, you may give your opponent time to raise their defences. Too late, and you will not achieve that split-second of indecision in your opponent. Now watch very carefully."

Gai nodded, before performing the technique on a thick tree. "Did you all catch that?" After the genin all hesitantly nodded, he smiled. "Then each of you shall try it on me. Now don't hold back on my account, I can take it! Lee! You first!"

"Yes, sensei!"

Gai blocked the boy's attack with his crossed arms, nodding. "Good. Next time, try aiming slightly higher and delay your yell for another half-second. Yosh! Hinata, your turn!"

"Um… sensei, I… I'm not really sure I can do this."

"Nonsense, Hinata! If you reach into yourself and stoke your fires of youth, you can do anything!"

"O…okay! D…Dy…Dy…"

Gai easily parried Hinata's weak flying kick with his crossed arms. She hung in mid-air for a moment, before falling to the ground, landing on her back. The air exploded from her lungs, and she spent the next few moments gasping in huge breaths. After that, she raised her head and weakly murmured, "-namic E…entry," before letting her head fall back to the ground.

"Good try Hinata-san!" Lee shouted in encouragement from his position to the left of Gai.

Tenten, who was still awaiting her turn, slapped the palm of her hand over her face and shook her head.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Lavender Beast of Konoha**

**Summary**: In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger when she graduates? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, and Hinata. Gen for now.

**Disclaimer**: Naruto was created by Kishimoto Masashi. No disrespect is intended in its use.

Edit: Small change made to the eating establishment scene.

-x--x--x-

"Neji, hold a moment."

The Hyuuga boy blinked, stopping in his daily pilgrimage to the Branch training grounds as his uncle approached him. Bowing his body to the exact degree expected of him, he asked, "Yes, Hiashi-sama?"

The clan leader looked at him for a moment, before speaking. "The new academy year begins next week. You shall attend the classes again in order to redeem your previous failure."

"As you command, Hiashi-sama."

Hiashi nodded at the boy's acceptance. "Your role has always been to act as a bodyguard to the heir – whomever that may be. You cannot fulfil that role if you cannot even make the genin rank." He started to walk past his nephew, pausing as he was level with the boy. "Do not disgrace our clan again."

Neji bowed again, saying nothing, as his uncle walked away. His face was a perfectly still mask, except for the fleeting tick that twinged across his face.

-x--x--x-

Sarutobi stared at his subordinate for several seconds before he rubbed his temples. "You cannot be serious."

"I think it is the best solution," Gai replied, his posture politely at attention but not overly stiff as he stood in front of his leader.

"Gai, your students have managed to successfully complete without incident only 2 of the 9 D-Class missions they have been assigned. They have technically completed 3 more, but in such a way that the mission sponsor is unlikely to ever use our services again. They have also technically failed 3 more, leaving us with 1 final mission with a failure so absolute that it could only be classed as catastrophic. Taking that into account, can you please explain how you feel that they are ready to partake in a C-class mission?"

"Certainly! My youthful students are simply overly eager to prove themselves. I believe this is causing them to over-stretch themselves on simple missions. If they were to perform a C-class mission, they would be able to more easily match their effort to their set task. In this way they can seize the dawning sunrise of their youth and burst forward into the shining promise of their adolescent potential!"

The Sandaime stared at him for a moment, his eyes slightly glazed, before he shook his head. "I am sorry, but despite what you just said I am not prepared to offer a higher ranking mission to your team. They simply have not proven themselves ready."

Gai rested both hands on the Hokage's desk as he leaned slightly forward. "Hokage-sama… flowers never bloom if you hide them from the light. It is true that the beating sun can be harsh, and wilt an unprepared bud, but a properly prepared and nourished flower can blossom into something wondrous under that blazing heat and light."

The jounin hesitated, before adding, "Sir, I must tell you that their will of fire is reaching a critical moment in its burning life. If their flame is not nurtured now, then it may never flare as brightly as it could." Team 9's instructor stood. "My team has made a group promise while posing as nice guys and girls. They will not fail this time. If they do, then I shall quit being a ninja. For my students, I make this promise to you." With that declaration, Gai gave him a thumbs-up and a blinding grin.

Sarutobi looked at the grinning man, his gaze calculating. After several long seconds, he sighed. "Very well, but it will be the easiest C-rank we have on the books. And Gai?" The old man leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk while supporting his chin with his clasped hands. "Please don't make promises that I won't let you keep."

-x--x--x-

"Um… F… Father." Hinata kept her eyes focussed on her breakfast, using her peripheral vision to look at Hiashi. Mustering her courage, she forged ahead. "I… I will be going away today on a m…mission."

Hiashi didn't respond, his attention solely focussed on his cup of green tea.

She flinched at his lack of reaction, but rallied as best she could. "I was t…told to pack for a th…three day journey."

The quiet air was broken by a mild slurp as Hiashi drained the last of his cup.

"So… um… that's where I'll… where I'll b…be."

With her speech done, the wavering chopsticks that were shaking in her unsteady hand brought a small piece of fish to her mouth. For a moment she looked up, food unswallowed, as her father left the table, before she began to chew. The delicately prepared food, which was made with care by the finest cooks that were available to the most powerful clan in all of Konoha tasted like ashes in her mouth.

-x--x--x-

"Mother, Father, I apologise for being here a day early."

Lee carefully dusted the two gravestones before him with a cloth before he replaced the incense sticks sticking out of a bowl in between the two stones. He sat on the grass between the markers, his posture straight and respectful. "I will not be able to visit you tomorrow as I will be on an important mission. This is the next step in my goal to becoming just like you both said – to be an excellent ninja one day."

Lee paused for a moment, before smiling. "I believe that my sensei can really help me do it- I can feel it deep down. Gai-sensei is really quite extraordinary - he's helping us all become better. I know that one day we'll be a really strong team, and it will be thanks to him. I think you would have liked him, he is very earnest and he sticks to his vows no matter what."

The young boy looked at the sky, squinting at the position of the sun, before rising to his feet. "I am sorry, I must go if I am to be ready in time. I shall be back when I can."

-x--x--x-

"Dad, don't you think you're overreacting?"

"Tenten, my little blossom, this is your first C-rank mission. I can't count the number of tales I've heard of what can go wrong on those. And there's nothing worse than running out of weapons on a battlefield."

"I'm only going on a C-rank mission - it's not like we're invading an enemy castle! And I can barely move! I'd be fine with only half of this stuff."

"Honey, please. With your mother gone, you're all the family that I have left. Just because I encouraged you to enter a dangerous profession doesn't mean that I don't want you to be as safe as you can be. So please… do it for me?"

"Damn it Dad, you're a grown man. Puppy dog eyes don't work for you."

"Very well, then how about blackmail?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I did have a customer in yesterday afternoon who was very interested in that repeating bow that's on display."

"What? You… you can't do that! You know I've been saving up for that weapon for ages!"

"Well maybe a paying customer now is better than a paying customer later who won't listen to her dear old dad and protect herself properly."

"Alright! Alright! I'll take it all! Okay?"

"That's my little girl."

-x--x--x-

Hinata nervously checked the straps of her large backpack for the fourteenth time as she waited for their last member to arrive. Lee was next to her, lightly jogging in place, while Gai stood in front of them, his hands on his hips.

The Hyuuga heiress looked at her male teammates before she hesitantly spoke up. "I… I'm sure that she'll be here soon."

Gai hummed in agreement. "No doubt. But this tardiness is most unusual for her."

"I am sure that she was just unavoidably delayed," Lee suggested.

"M…maybe she-" Hinata paused. "Oh! There she is!"

Gai and Lee squinted, barely making out a pink-shirted figure in the distance.

"Good eyes, Hinata-san!" Lee paused, a look of puzzlement on his face. "Can you hear that?"

They could – a faint sound of clacking and clanging was becoming more distinct as their tardy teammate jogged towards them. As Tenten drew closer, the source of the noise became apparent.

Two bulging kunai holsters – one strapped to each thigh. A further ten kunai and ten shuriken holstered in a weapons bandolier that was slung from her left shoulder to right hip. The chain of a kusarigama coiled from right shoulder to left hip, with the kama and weighted end of the weapon tucked behind her back. The blade tips of two kama poking out from their positions, strapped crosswise to her back. Two daggers were sheathed – one for each hip, and a set of nunchuka was thrust diagonally through the front of the belt.

These were the visible weapons that Tenten wore. Based on the fact that she was uncharacteristically wearing a long-sleeved shirt for once, and also due to the clashing sounds of metal-against-metal-against-wood that she was making, her team suspected that there was more besides that, hidden out of sight under her clothes.

Noticing the serious look on her teacher's face, Tenten was about to blurt out something defensive about her accoutrements when Gai nodded.

"Yosh! I see that you are weighing yourself down so that every step of our mission will help increase your strength and endurance. Good idea, Tenten! To really get a good workout, though, we should also make it a race to our mission target."

Tenten paled, looking to her teammates for support in stopping Gai's idea, but…

Lee looked intrigued, before shouting, "Great idea, sensei!"

"Do… do you really think that would help, Gai-sensei?" Hinata had a look of polite consideration.

Gai grinned. "Of course! There is no time on a mission outside of the village for any serious sparring or training, but it is the perfect opportunity for building your endurance. It's best to seize such opportunities and make the most of them whenever you can! To make it interesting, how about whoever reaches our destination last shall set-up camp?"

"All… all right," Hinata agreed with a nod. "If you think it's b…best. I know I need to do whatever I can to in…increase my stamina. Shall… shall we go?"

Tenten's heart sank as her teammates followed their teacher as he ran through Konoha's main gate. With a groan, she dashed after them, doing her best to ignore the weight that was bearing down on her as she muttered to herself, "Why am I the only sane one on my team?"

-x--x--x-

They travelled in silence for a while, running at a very fast lope so that they didn't tire out too quickly. After a while, Lee shook his head as if coming out of his own thoughts and turned his face to his teacher. "Gai-sensei, do you really think that weighing yourself down all the time would help strengthen the body?"

Gai nodded. "Indeed, it definitely can. Ninjas used to do it all the time, until other techniques such as gravity seals and chakra channelling became popular. Not only did weights raise stamina and strength, but in the more extreme cases it could even aid in increasing speed." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment, while still keeping his speed up. "In fact, thinking on it I believe that you might find such a tool to be useful in your development. I should warn you, however, that you would need to push your resolve and your resistance to pain to unimaginable heights if you want to achieve real success with such a method."

"I am willing to do whatever it takes, Gai-sensei!"

"That's the spirit! Then I shall arrange something when we get back to the village."

They continued in silence for a while, before Hinata abruptly asked, "B…but what about me?"

Gai blinked, turning his head to his youngest student, who had covered her mouth in horror at her outburst. After a moment, she took her hands away. "I… I didn't mean any disrespect," Hinata explained. "I just… it's just that Lee and Tenten are trying so h…hard to get better. I…I do not want to be a burden to the team. What…what can I do to improve?"

Her teacher looked at her for a few moments, before he replied, "Hinata, you have been doing the exercises that I have assigned to you?"

"Of… of course! In…including the optional ones you suggested."

"Indeed you have, for you've been keeping up with us today without troubles. Can you imagine doing that when you first joined us?"

Hinata shook her head with a no. If she'd tried this run on her first day with the team, she would have collapsed by now. "But-"

"But it's still not enough?" Gai suggested. When Hinata hesitantly nodded, he grinned. "Good! That is the attitude we all need to have if we are to do our best! The first step to being a hard-working genius is to try your very hardest, but then once you have done that you must then try some more. The second step-" he paused, thinking about it for a moment, before continuing, "The second step depends on who you are as a ninja. As Lee cannot use chakra, he will need to hone his skill, speed and strength to extremely high levels in order to compensate."

Lee ducked his head, embarrassed at having his weaknesses highlighted, but not denying the underlying truth of the words.

"Tenten must also hone the skills she already possesses – accuracy, speed and dexterity – to be the best that she can be. Beyond that, however, two paths lie open to her."

Tenten looked up from the ground at this, her face slack with the exertion of running with the weight of her weapons, but still clearly showing interest in what was being said.

"She is engaged in the first path as we speak – stamina and strength exercises to ensure that she is physically capable of carrying sufficient quantities of weapons in order to be prepared for any situation. For you, Hinata, we must focus on ways of getting you close to the opponent in order to allow you the use of your Jyuken. As we cannot increase your arm reach, that means that we should increase your speed and dodging training. I shall think on it, and come up with a training plan when we return to Konoha."

Hinata blinked, looking down at her short arms for a moment. "Increase my reach?" she whispered to herself, as her eyes narrowed in thought.

-x--x--x-

At just after noon, Gai skidded to a halt in a clearing, causing his team to desperately back pedal in their attempts to avoid a pile up. "Yosh! This looks like a good place to rest for a few minutes."

"Oh thank the kami!" Tenten wheezed as she supported her arms against a tree, and then used them as a pillow for her forehead. "Somebody please kill me now."

Hinata stared at her female companion. The Hyuuga girl was in the unusual position of not being the most exhausted person on the team after exercises for once. It didn't feel quite right to see the normally fitter Tenten acting like she was about to collapse. "Are… are you all right?"

Tenten twisted her wrist in a tired semi-wave before pulling a small flask of water out of her supply pouch and taking a drink. "I'll be okay. But I should have stood up to my Dad and said no to all this weaponry. I'm not much good to anyone like this – if we were attacked they could just breathe heavily at me and I'd fall over."

"I…I'm sure nothing will happen," Hinata suggested. "They wouldn't send us out on a d…dangerous C-class mission for our first time, right?"

"I guess not," the weapons girl agreed. When Gai signalled for them to move out a few minutes later, she groaned but started to run without further protest.

-x--x--x-

The three seasoned bandits tracked their unsuspecting prey – one shadowing on each side of the group, with a third covering them from the rear. There was good money on offer for the hitai-ite of Konoha genin ninja – unofficially, of course - from rival ninja countries who were eager to eliminate the competition before they grew skilled enough to be of concern.

The brigands also had a second reason to want to attack. While they were technically not missing-nin - having never officially been made genin - each of them had attended the academy until seven years ago. They had been cruelly failed at the very last post (or, as one of them had put it, the 'Bell test, my ass!' incident). It would be nice to get some revenge-by-proxy by taking out some of the ones who had passed.

They seemed to have hit the jackpot here. Two of the ninja were weak-looking females, and even though one of them had a lot of weapons on her, she was clearly trying to compensate for something because she obviously couldn't handle them – the girl was gasping for breath and starting to slow down.

None of the three bandits were stupid – they weren't going to attack the kids head on. No, they were following them for now, jumping from tree branch to tree branch so that they could see each other and their prey, while their quarry never spotted them due to the foliage matching their camouflaged clothes. They would wait until the children made camp for the night. Once they were asleep and one of the weaker ones was on guard, they'd slip in and slit their throats. It'd be easy money.

-x--x--x-

"Alright, I've had enough!" Tenten shouted, throwing her arms into the air in frustration with enough force to propel a kunai each from the hidden wrist launchers she had concealed under both of her shirtsleeves. Her genin teammates turned to her, missing the faint twin sounds of bodies falling to the ground. Their teacher, on the other hand, dashed into the surrounding bushes.

"What is wrong, Tenten-san?" Lee asked her, a concerned look on his face.

"It's these weapons!" She unwound and threw the heavy kusarigama to the ground as emphasis. "I can't take another step with all of this on me! My back is killing me and I think I'm chafing in several places because most of the hidden holsters I'm using were designed for adult males. I need to-"

"Well done, Tenten!" Gai shouted as he strode out of the bushes. "I was planning to deal with it myself later on, but that was truly an impressive display."

"Um…" The weapons girl almost asked him what he was commending her for, but considering that his last congratulations had resulted in that morning's marathon, she restrained the urge. Guessing that he was congratulating her on finally admitting to her limits, she hesitantly said, "Uh… thanks, I guess."

"Here you go, " Gai walked up, handing her two kunai. "I cleaned them for you."

"Cleaned them?" Tenten furrowed her brow in confusion for a moment as she looked at the weapons, before she realised that they were the smaller-than-normal version she used for her hidden launchers. She must have set them off accidentally. '_Gonna have to be careful of that, or I could hurt someone,_' she mused. Figuring he meant that he'd cleaned them of the dirt they'd landed in, she nodded and said, "Oh. Thanks Sensei."

Gai nodded, and picked up the heavy weapon that she had tossed to the ground. "I shall carry this for you, if you need a break. I certainly think you have earned it."

"Sensei, I would be glad to take on this burden!" Lee volunteered.

With a hearty laugh, their teacher passed the kusarigama on to his male student. "Very well. Carry it with pride, Lee!"

-x--x--x-

The one remaining bandit ran for his life, his face contorted into a look of shocked awe. Under his breath he was continually muttering to himself, "Holy Crap, holy crap, holy crap!" as he raced away. That girl – that monstrously skilled girl had taken down his two teammates in a display of weapons proficiency that had him gibbering in fear. One minute she looked like she was about to pass out from exhaustion, the next she had flicked her wrists and thrown her weapons with such terrifying accuracy that each of his companions had died instantly with a kunai through their eye and a surprised expression on their faces. All of this without the slightest hint or indication that she'd ever spotted them! And afterwards she just stood there talking to her teammates while her leader cleaned up her mess! What sort of ungodly skills and unnatural mental conditioning were they teaching those ninja kids these days that they could kill like that without any remorse?

Shaking his head, the bandit doubled his speed, determined to escape and warn the others of his trade about the weapons mistress and her cold-blooded aim.

-x--x--x-

Red was starting to tinge the dusk sky when Hinata saw Gai slowing to a stop up ahead. She glanced back at Tenten, who was still running slowly despite divesting her heaviest weapon. Remembering the conditions their teacher placed on their race that morning, and seeing that her female teammate was still running due more to determination than anything else, Hinata came to the conclusion that the poor girl wouldn't be able to set up camp right now without collapsing. With that thought, she slowed down enough so that the weapons girl soon passed her. Tenten's eyes were focussed on the ground, her mind probably centred on keeping her body going, so she didn't notice the Hyuuga girl's switch in places.

Half a minute later, Hinata was the last to jog into the clearing. Seeing all eyes upon her, her fingers fidgeted for a moment before she murmured, "I had to s…stop for a moment to... um… to tie my shoe."

They all looked down at her ninja sandals for a moment - which were basically an open-toed boot and therefore didn't have any laces, straps or buckles - before looking up at her.

After a few seconds, Gai nodded. "Yes, it's always best to ensure your equipment is in its best working order. Lee, Tenten – gather some firewood and water. There should be a stream around 50 metres to the north. Hinata, as last to arrive you can set up the tent and start the campfire."

Hinata blinked as she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. Turning, she saw Tenten looking at her with a serious expression.

"You didn't have to do that," the weapons girl said, her voice tinged with exhaustion. Hesitating, she added, "But thanks."

-x--x--x-

"Um…Sensei?"

Gai halted the taijutsu forms he had just started practicing and looked at his youngest student. "Hinata! What can I do for you?"

"You, ah, you told us that y…you would bring the tent supplies."

"Indeed I did," Gai agreed, handing her a large bundle. "Here you go."

Hinata looked down at the bundle. She hesitated, looking between the bundle and her teacher a few times.

"Is everything all right?" he asked after the first two minutes of this.

"Of… of course." After a few seconds, she added, "It… it's only that there's just o…one tent in that bundle."

"Well spotted! You are correct," Gai agreed. "I assure you, it is big enough for all of you. I have my own tent to cover my needs."

"S… so you want us all to? In… In the same? T…together? At… at the same time?"

Her teacher nodded. "This too, is part of your training. There is nothing prurient about this, I assure you, especially with Lee being a stand-up sort of guy. You would have found much the same situation if you had been a part of most other genin teams too. Many jounin believe, as I do, that the ninja that sleep under the same roof, that eat from the same pot, and that strive for common goals – these are the ninja that form the truest bonds of teamship. Today is the day we all take that first step to the next level of being a close-knit crew."

What he left unsaid, as Hinata nodded and left to put up the tent, was that sooner or later his team would all find themselves in many sorts of embarrassing situations. It was an inevitable side-effect of spending so much time in such close proximity with two other people your own age. It was best that all three of his young charges started getting used to living in each other's space now and not later after their youthful hormones really started to kick in.

-x--x--x-

Tenten sat leaning against a tree as she looked at Hinata setting up the tent. She'd offered to help, but the young girl insisted that it was her task alone to do. Lee had also been helpful, suggesting that he take the tougher task of lugging the water back to the camp. The weapons girl had taken the easier task of gathering firewood, and she had already completed her assignment.

"So," Tenten drawled just as Lee walked into the camp, carrying a full pot of water. "One tent, huh?"

Hinata nodded.

"Well, my dad did warn me I might have to set aside some of my natural instincts as a girl when I started down the path of becoming a ninja," the bun-haired girl said with a sigh. Turning to Lee, she added, "Just please tell me that you don't snore."

Lee looked at her in surprise. "I have no idea," he admitted.

"No idea?" Tenten asked, slightly curious.

"I live by myself, so there's no-one to tell me of such things."

"Oh." The two girls looked at each other, before Tenten turned back to Lee and said, "I'm sorry, Lee. I didn't know."

All three fell into silence for a few moments, as Hinata finished putting up the tent. Feeling a small burst of pride at getting the job done all by herself, she turned to her two compatriots.

"L…Lee-kun! Wh…what are you doing?"

Lee blinked, looking up from where he had been gathering the wood together. "I was going to start the fire so that I could begin tonight's meal."

"B… but Gai-sensei assigned that task to me."

"There is no need for you to bother yourself with that. I need to place this pot to boil in any case, and so it would be just as easy for me to accomplish the task."

"Y…yes, but I was… I was entrusted with the chore as part of my punishment and so it is my duty to ensure I do it."

Tenten looked between the two as they began possibly the most polite argument she had ever seen. "I'll just get out of your way, then," she said, pulling herself up with a groan.

-x--x--x-

"Gai-sensei?"

The taijutsu master looked up to see his older female student. "Tenten! What can I do for you?"

The weapons girl hesitated for a moment, before sitting in front of him. "Earlier today you mentioned that there are two paths I could develop along. Can you tell me what the second one was?"

"Ah, you noticed that, did you? Good question! It was actually something covered at the academy, although perhaps not in any depth. Allow me to ask you a question in return – what do you know about summoning?"

Tenten furrowed her brow, trying to remember her classes. She had been an average student, neither smart nor stupid, and she did remember a little on that subject. "Um… let's see… if I remember correctly, summoning is a discipline wherein the summoner enters into a contract with a type of animal."

"That is the more advanced form, yes," Gai agreed.

"More advanced-" Tenten cut herself off as she remembered the relevant lesson. "Of course, you're talking about the summoning scrolls that can be used for items! But Sensei, I did think of this when we had that academy lesson. Every demonstration given was of one weapon being summoned from one scroll. That would quickly become more bulky than carrying them strapped to weapons belts like I do now. And wouldn't the big weapons require big scrolls, making it just as unwieldy to carry them that way?"

Her teacher shook his head. "In its most basic form, you are correct about the summoning scroll's limitations. However, with a bit of practice you can create one long scroll that will allow you to store one weapon per symbol. If you were to learn the skill and apply it diligently, then within a few years you could store your weapons in writing so compact that you would be able to have hundreds of weapons in one long scroll."

"Hundreds…" Tenten's eyes lit up. "Sensei, do you know someone who could teach me to make these more advanced summoning scrolls?"

"Do I know someone?" Gai laughed for a moment, before replying, "Indeed, let me show you someone I know."

-x--x--x-

Lee frowned at his verbal opponent. "While I certainly respect your determination to see your way through on this matter, I do feel that it is unnecessary for you to accomplish this task. You put a substantial amount of effort into erecting our tent, and we all know that you only received your punishment because you wished to spare Tenten the effort in her tired state."

Hinata was about to reply when an unfamiliar gravelly voice cut in. "There is no need to argue over something so trivial, children."

The two genin turned to the source of the voice. Facing them was a large red turtle, a Konoha hitai-ite barely visible as it hung tied around its neck.

"I'm sorry, did you just speak?" Lee asked the animal as he looked around to see who was playing a joke on him. He'd had his fair share of malicious pranks pulled on him at the academy due to his chakra problems.

The turtle opened its mouth and spoke again. "Yes, I did. In regards to your argument, I suggest that in cases such as these you should always look to your Sensei, and follow his words."

Tenten, who was behind the turtle, turned to her sensei. "You can summon animals? That's supposed to be really rare!"

Gai nodded. "Yes, there are only six known animal contracts in Konoha." He paused, and added, "Although there is a person who can call a seventh animal summon, the actual contract was lost when that person's teacher betrayed us and fled the village." He looked to Lee and Hinata, who were still warily eyeing the large turtle, and cried out, "Lee! Hinata! Come over here!"

After his team gathered, and the turtle lumbered over, Gai smiled and continued. "Team, I have been thinking about this since our discussion this morning. So far I have concentrated on you as a group by increasing your fitness and teaching you some of the basics of my taijutsu style. I believe that each of you is now ready to start walking down your individual paths to find your own way of the ninja."

The genin looked at each other in confusion.

"What this means is that I shall increasingly be focussing on one-on-one training with you all. When I cannot be with you due to this focus, I would like you to treat my turtle summons as if you were talking to me. I have taught them much about the way of taijutsu, and they can help me pass on this knowledge to you."

"Please treat me kindly," the turtle added as way of introduction.

The ninja children nodded, some more reluctantly than others, at the strange request.

"Now then, having said that, why hasn't the campfire been lit yet?"

Lee was about to reply, when Hinata quickly spoke up and snatched victory. "I… I was about to do that, Gai-sensei."

-x--x--x-

None of the genin were at their best when they woke the next morning. With two being single children, and the last coming from a not very close family, none of them had ever slept in the same room as someone else. All three had experienced difficulty in getting to sleep the night before with the unusual sounds of two other people breathing so close to them. Despite their slight tiredness from missed sleep, they were soon ready and on their way following their instructor.

Around an hour into this second day, they entered a large clearing.

"This looks like it," their sensei noted as he glanced at his map. "Now then, all we need to do is collect a few bushels of this herb and we will be able to make our return. Well done, team, we're ahead of schedule! This is the reward of hard work and exercise." With a small flourish, the jounin pulled some sheets of paper out of his jacket. "Now, let's see."

Gai, Lee and Tenten gathered around the sheaf of papers that contained their mission brief.

"So why don't they just grow this stuff in Konoha, rather than rely on getting it out here?" Tenten asked. She had recovered well since yesterday, especially since she had used Gai's spare supplies and guidance to create three small summoning scrolls that now housed her three heaviest weapons.

"I am told that they have tried to transplant the herb to the village greenhouses in the past," Gai explained, "but apparently there is some unknown factor at work in these fields that prevents the herb from growing elsewhere. The Aburame suspect there's some sort of fertilisation going on by earthworms or beetles that are local to the area."

"Oh." Tenten looked around, and shrugged. "Well, I guess it makes for an easy mission, then. What did this plant look like, again?"

"Hmm," Gai mused as they looked at the sketching of the plant that had been part of the mission package. "Thorned top, silver stems. That should not be too hard to find."

"Yosh!" Lee tightened his right hand into a fist. "We shall have gathered enough to complete the mission within ten minutes, or I shall perform 1000 pushups! No… 1250 pushups! Wait, no, 1500-"

"Um… is this enough?"

The jounin and two genin turned to the last member of their team, who was standing there with a cloth bag full of the herb they were after. They looked up from the bag to the girl holding it.

"I… I know a little about herbs," Hinata admitted as she delicately brushed some dirt off her hands.

"That was too easy," Tenten muttered as she looked around, her body tensed in case of ambush.

"Are… Are you all r…right?" Hinata asked, blinking at the other girl's actions.

The weapons girl shook her head as she slumped back into a normal posture. "Yeah, I guess I'm fine." Their previous failures were making her paranoid. It wasn't like the place was going to explode or anything.

-x--x--x-

"Are you sure we can't go back?" The blonde bishounen looked to his travelling companion.

"Yes, I'm sure," his large, hunched associate rumbled as he shuffled along.

"It'd only take twenty minutes to get back there, tops. I mean, think about it – the juxtaposition of the herbs that give life and the explosive clay that takes it, yeah? The quiet meadow and the thunderous detonation. It's the dichotomy of order and chaos wrapped up in one great big bang! This is what art is all about, yeah."

"No. We're not going back just so you can blow up some wild herbs. If you want to throw around some explosives, do it along the way."

"Hey, there's no art involved in just blowing something up for laughs and giggles, yeah."

-x--x--x-

They made it back to the village around 9pm that same night. A combined team desire to ensure that nothing happened to fail their mission had meant that they all willingly kept running even after darkness set in.

"The Hokage should still be in his office at this time," Gai explained as they made their way to the Hokage's tower. "It is always best to report in promptly whenever you have an out-of-village mission." Noticing the tired nods of his team, he stopped. "But there's no need for you all to attend. I shall report our success in your stead." He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet. "Here, I'll give you the standard C-class reward now, and get reimbursed when I report in."

After handing out the money to his students, he nodded to all of them. "You have all done very well on your first C-class mission. You can hold your heads high in your actions. Now then, I shall see you at the usual time tomorrow." He turned, giving a backwards wave as he walked off.

Tenten's smile widened to a grin as she counted out her pay. "Looks like I'll be able to afford that repeating bow after all."

"Afford? Does your father charge you for your weapons?" Lee asked.

Tenten blinked. "Well, yes, of course. He gives me a discount, but he's still running a business and he can't afford to be giving me all the stock I need for free. If he did, I'd probably put him out of business."

Staring at the night sky for a moment, Tenten spoke up again. "Hmm. It's getting late. Dad wouldn't be expecting me back until tomorrow, so he won't have cooked anything for me." She turned to her companions. "Hey, why don't we eat out? Let's celebrate our first C-class pay."

Lee nodded. "I would prefer to avoid cooking something at this time of night myself. I would be glad to join you."

Hinata blinked in surprise. They'd never really 'hung out' after training or missions before. Maybe Gai was right and the forced sleeping arrangements last night had triggered a change in the team's relationship? Realising that her teammates were now both staring at her, awaiting a response, she quickly blurted, "S…sure! Sounds… It sounds good."

-x--x--x-

"Mission accomplished, sir." Gai reported as he dropped the herb satchel onto the Hokage's desk.

"Really? Well done. There weren't any casualties, I take it?" the Sandaime joked.

"Indeed there was!"

Sarutobi blinked. "What?"

"We were being tracked by 3 bandits with minimal shinobi training – genin level at best. Tenten eliminated two of them in a display of blind-fire accuracy that I would be hard-pressed to match. The third bandit withdrew when they saw their companions fall."

"Oh? And how is she handling her first kills?"

"Like she never performed them in the first place." Gai smiled, and added, "She's certainly mentally tough, that one."

"Well, I trust you'll be there if she shows any signs of trauma. The first kill is always the hardest. She may just be hiding her grief at this stage."

-x--x--x-

Tenten burst into spontaneous laughter as they all happily raised their glasses of water in a toast. "To success. May we start seeing a lot more of it! Although let's hope that we actually get to do something on the next C-class mission."

Hinata looked around the small eating establishment that Tenten had led them to. It was a little too dingy for anyone to call it a restaurant, and she was far too polite to think of any more appropriate words (such as 'shabby dive').

"The food's okay, especially for the price, it's open late and they're pretty quick in serving you," Tenten had explained to them when they'd entered. "This place is in between my house and the academy - I used to come here when I was out too late at the training grounds and missed dinner at home. I don't eat out much otherwise, so I don't know where else is good."

Hinata couldn't help but notice that her teammate's explanation seemed to be aimed more towards her than her male teammate. It wasn't the first time that either Tenten or Lee had seemed mildly embarrassed when they mentioned something about their background to her, much in the same way that a farmer might be self-conscious about his dirt-encrusted hands if he was ever asked to shake the hand of a princess.

Despite the general lack of conflict in their teamwork, which was probably mostly due to the easy-going or polite nature of the three genin, the truth was that they really didn't know each other very well yet. Hinata still had no idea what drove Lee to work so hard, or why Tenten had chosen to pursue the dangerous life of a ninja. In turn, they still seemed to be careful of insulting her supposed high-born sensibilities – she still remembered the surprised looks she had been given when she had willingly waded barefoot into the mud-encrusted and algae-slimed shoreline of the pond that they had weeded for one of their earlier D-class missions. It hurt, sometimes, when even her teammates expected her to live up to the mantle of being the heiress of a major clan.

But maybe this was the chance for her team to break those walls that still existed between them. Now that Tenten had made the first move, perhaps they could all learn about each other. Maybe they could develop beyond teammates and one day, maybe… maybe they could even be friends.

Friends. What would that be like, having friends? She'd never really seen friendship up close. Her father did not have friends – or if he did, he had never brought them home. Neji did not have friends, nor did Hanabi. Her family had not prepared her for such things. At the academy, she had seen people who had friends, but having never been close to any of them she had no idea how their friendship had affected them. Surely it must be worthwhile having them, if so many formed such bonds.

She was broken from her thoughts by the return of the waitress with their food. As Lee broke off his earnest explanation of the weights that Gai would be getting for him, and started to dig into his meal, Hinata took the opportunity to cast a sidelong glance at her teammates in this unguarded moment.

Lee had a fiery drive to his training that did not translate to the other segments of his life – besides being unfailingly polite in conversation, he also apparently ate carefully, as if he was being constantly watched for his manners. Tenten, despite her blunt manner and propensity for wielding heavy weaponry, held onto her chopsticks almost daintily. There were, she realised, facets to her companions that she had barely discovered. She wondered if they were as interested in finding out about her as she was with them.

Lee blinked, looking up from his half-finished meal and glancing at her full bowl before meeting her eyes. "Is everything all right, Hinata-san? If your dish is not to your liking, would you prefer to try some of ours instead?"

"Oh… no, no. I… I was just letting it cool a little before I started," she replied, flushing both in guilt at her little lie, and in embarrassment over being caught staring. Trying to deflect the conversation, she turned to Tenten and asked, "Um… that weapon you had on the m…mission – the kama attached to a ch…chain. I haven't… that is, I don't remember seeing you use it before in training."

"Oh, the kusarigama?" Tenten blinked, looking up from her meal. "I only wore it because Dad insisted. It's a pretty good weapon against swords or spears but it's not my favourite tool, to be honest. I have some bad memories of it."

"Really?" Lee looked at the weapons girl, taking the distraction, to Hinata's relief. "Why is that?"

Hinata took a tentative bite of her meal while Tenten launched into a story about the first time she'd ever wielded a kusarigama. The Hyuuga heiress had spent her entire life eating food cooked by dedicated and talented chefs. Sometimes, when her father was away from the clan holdings, she would sneak down to the kitchens and watch the cooks at work. Occasionally (rarely) she had even gathered the courage to ask them questions, finding the whole art of cooking to be fascinating. From those chefs, she had learned the basics of telling good food from bad.

With that experience, she guessed that the vegetables in her meal were somewhat old and overcooked, the spices were heavy to probably hide poor-quality meat, and the broth was definitely too oily. As Lee broke into polite laughter at Tenten's exaggerated description of how she had accidentally tied herself to a tree with her own weapon's chain, Hinata smiled. When Lee responded to his teammate by admitting to one of his own training mishaps, she took another bite of her poorly prepared food. Tenten's laughter at Lees' tale echoed around the small restaurant, the weapons girl leaning on her two companions to steady herself

Seeing their eyes upon her, Hinata realised that it was her turn to share an embarrassing training tale. Knowing that she couldn't deny them when they had already shared, she hesitantly steeled her courage and haltingly told them of the time she had almost stabbed her cousin with a kunai. The story involved her practicing her weapons throwing on a log two years before, while Neji and her father had been walking by on a nearby path. One nervously and poorly aimed throw had seen her kunai glance off the log towards the boy and only Hiashi's quick block had saved her cousin from damage. It had mortified her at the time – she'd apologised to Neji for days afterwards. But now, upon seeing the amusement in her teammates eyes, she was beginning to think that it didn't seem so bad in the retelling.

-x--x--x-

Hinata waved to her companions as they left to their separate homes, a smile lighting her lips even as she fought the urge to regurgitate the horrible food she had just eaten. As she walked towards her clan house, she quietly started to hum the tune of one of the songs that she had heard while in the eating establishment. It had been playing when Lee had proven that he could indeed outlast both Tenten and her when it came to balancing a spoon on his nose (thus negating his promise to do 1000 chin-ups if he lost). As she stopped for a moment, smiling despite the way her guts were churning in complaint over the mystery meat she had consumed, Hinata came to a realisation:

That was the best meal she had ever had.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Lavender Beast of Konoha**

**Summary**: In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger when she graduates? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, and Hinata. Gen for now.

**Disclaimer**: Naruto was created by Kishimoto Masashi. No disrespect is intended in its use.

**Author's Note**: Thanks to all who have reviewed, faved or alerted this story so far. I'm getting the feeling that some people are avoiding reading this fic due to the idea of Hinata in spandex (not that that's actually happened so far). Hopefully as time goes on and the review count gets a bit higher, more will be enticed to give it a chance and hate it or love it on the actual story's merits.

-x--x--x-

"Good morning, class. For those of you who did not have me last year, my name is Umino Iruka. I will be your teacher for this year. As for my regular students, please do not pester the new faces on the reasons why they are here – their reasons are their own and if they wish to tell you then they will." The scarred chuunin turned to the blackboard, writing down the class syllabus as he continued to speak. "Now then, in this final year we shall be covering the more advanced topics of the shinobi life, including basic genjutsu and ninjutsu use, as well as advanced trap making and survival skills."

"And what of teamwork? When shall that be covered?"

"Teamwork?" Iruka blinked, turning to his class. His eyes quickly settled on the boy sitting by himself in the front row. Had the teacher arrived earlier to class, he would have seen the other students swerving away from sitting at the boy's desk as they received a stony glance from the transfer student. Some pupils had even chosen to sit four to a three-seat bench rather than go near the Hyuuga boy. "Well, we do get you to team up for some of the tasks – the survival missions, mostly. But teamwork is something that your jounin-sensei will cover in depth with you when you graduate."

Neji did not respond, his face impassive. Underneath the desk, out of sight, he clenched his hands into painfully tight fists.

-x--x--x-

Hinata looked around the classroom, her expression falling as she realised that her cousin was not there. After waiting at the entrance for a few minutes after the end of classes, she had decided to check inside. It appeared that he had somehow gotten past her, however, and so she had missed her cousin again. It had not taken her long to realise that he had been actively avoiding her at the clan holdings since her graduation, but she had thought that the academy would have been the perfect place to catch him. She hated to think of how the gap between them was widening so far, but she couldn't begin to close it if she couldn't even talk to him. At this point she was wondering if he'd ever let her get close enough to him again to ever apologise.

"Excuse me."

Surprised, Hinata turned to see ten girls facing her. Somewhat nervous about the being confronted by a gang, she hesitantly nodded rather than saying anything.

"You're a Hyuuga, right?"

Hinata nodded again.

The girls looked at each other, before giving the lead girl 'go on' signs. "I don't suppose you could help us out? You see, we were, um, playing a game of Ninja Tag. Yeah, Ninja Tag, and we still haven't found the person last tagged."

"Um… Ninja Tag?" Hinata had never heard of the game, but then again she'd never been invited to play with the other shinobi while at the academy.

The lead girl nodded. "Yeah. We invented it to… er… help increase our tracking and hiding skills. But the current person who is 'it' is too skilled-" At that point, several of the girls sighed and smiled. "-and cool to be caught so easily. The only problem is that no-one else will get a go until we find him. I don't suppose you could help us with your eyes?"

She looked at them for a moment, feeling a prick of suspicion at the explanation. There was something not quite right going on here. "You… you're not trying to hurt them are you?"

"What?" the girl responded in honest shock. "Of course not! He means the world to us!"

After drowning in their pleading gazes for a few moments, Hinata silently admonished herself. What was wrong with her? Here these girls were, sincerely asking for her help, and she was treating them with the same suspicion she would have had if they were suspects in a murder trial. It was clear from the girls' heartfelt responses that they were not trying to attack this hiding boy.

"Of… of course. I'm sorry. What… what does he look like?"

After she received a description, she activated the Byakugan, doing her best to ignore the way the girls took a step back when her doujutsu transformed her face from calm and reflective to harsh and veiny. After a few moments of sorting through the almost 360 degrees of visual data, she stretched her senses to see through the walls (while studiously trying to ignore the visual data coming from the east wall, where she knew a toilet block lay). Finally she smiled as she saw a black-haired boy dressed in a blue shirt and white shorts. He was leaning against the back of the classroom's storage cupboard, a genjutsu illusion of the wall cast in front of the boy to hide him. As she looked, she saw that sweat was beading on his forehead from the strain of keeping the illusion going for so long. She couldn't help but be impressed with his determination to keep hidden – he must really hate losing at Ninja Tag.

"He's… uh… over there," she said, pointing to the cupboard. "Behind a g…genjutsu." As she deactivated her special eyes, she just had time to see his eyes widen and his mouth start to form a swear word. Resisting the urge to shake her head at the boy's competitiveness, she hesitantly accepted the profuse thanks of the many girls.

As the girls swarmed towards the cupboard, Hinata smiled to herself and exited the room, her disappointment at missing Neji overridden by doing her good deed for the day. Still, she thought, it was so nice of the boy, being the only guy to play with the girls.

-x--x--x-

Two girls were walking home from the Ninja Academy, arguing loudly with each other when the pink-haired girl stopped in the middle of the street.

"What's the matter with you?" Her platinum blonde companion asked.

"I don't know," the other girl replied. "I feel like we somehow just lost a great opportunity."

"So your forehead senses are tingling? What else do they tell you? Is Sasuke trapped down a well?"

"Shut it, pig!"

-x--x--x-

Slowly she brought the ink brush down onto the paper, her tongue sticking out to the side of her mouth as she concentrated carefully on getting this just right. She had never really spent much time on calligraphy before, but thankfully her steady hand with weaponry did translate to a steady hand with a brush. It was no work of art, but slowly her creation was taking shape.

Tenten narrowed her eyes as she made the next stroke, before quickly placing her ink-stained left palm under the raised brush to ensure that she did not drip any of the chakra-imbued ink anywhere but where it needed to be. She was about to make the next stroke when she paused, and shouted out, "You better not be planning to jump out and surprise me or anything!"

After a few moments, her father walked into her room, shaking his head. "You wound me with your accusations. I know what it's like to be rudely interrupted in the middle of painstakingly creating something – even if it is weapons in my case – so I'd never deliberately do anything to ruin your work."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry Dad, I'm just really nervous. One mistake now can ruin a week's worth of work. Not to mention flushing down the toilet all the ryo I spent on this scroll." After making one last stroke, she carefully laid her brush to the side, well away from the paper.

"Is it finished?"

"Not quite, but I'm close. How does it look?"

"It looks great, Blossom."

"It's nowhere near as neat as the etchings you make on your blades."

"Tenten, I've spent twenty-five years practicing those etchings. Give your dad a little of his due – you're not going to be perfect overnight." He paused, and added, "Especially not with the way you write your 'fu' symbols."

"Hey! There's nothing wrong with the way I write 'fu'!"

They both chuckled for a few moments, before Tenten sobered. "Hey, Dad."

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever want to become a ninja?"

"To be honest, not really. I always enjoyed creating things far too much to have gone in for any other sort of lifestyle. Even if they're eventually used to take life, there's still no better experience than seeing all your hard work and effort transform into a well-crafted blade."

"Yeah, I guess creating can be okay," she agreed as she looked down at her scroll.

"Twelve years of watching me work and you only come to this realisation now? Humph. Still, I should be glad you came to this epiphany too late to become my apprentice – I'd hate to think on what sort of wonky weaponry you would have made if you'd followed in my footsteps, based on your sloppy go at the 'fu' symbol."

"Damn it Dad, there is nothing wrong with the way I write my 'fu's!"

-x--x--x-

"Well, I finally finished it," Tenten declared proudly as she walked into her team's training ground while holding a rolled up scroll out to her teammates.

Lee smiled. "Good job, Tenten-san! You will definitely get use out of that."

Tenten nodded. "Sure will. I've got to admit, it's really tough infusing the chakra into the ink so it won't bleed any interference into the chakra signature of the next summoning symbol. But I managed to fit fifty weapons into this." To emphasise her point, she held the scroll in one hand and opened it with the other, stretching her arms wide to display seven symbols.

"Um…" Hinata paused, trying to think of how to be diplomatic. "How… How do you intend to, er, use it?"

Tenten looked at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Well… Well, it looks like a very long scroll," Hinata said. "How do you… how will you access the later weapons in the scroll?"

The weapons girl cupped her chin in thought. "Hmm… I had thought of rolling it out in front of me, but you're right – I might not have time for it in a running battle, or the space if we're in a tight canyon or something."

"You could chop it down into smaller scrolls," Lee suggested.

"No, then I'd have to try and differentiate between five or even ten scrolls in the middle of battle if I wanted a specific weapon. If they're all on one or maybe at the most two scrolls, I can at least memorise the order of the weapons." Tenten thought about it for a little longer, before she had the spark of an idea. "Of course! Wall hangings!"

Her two teammates looked at each other in confusion.

"You know, wall hangings!" she repeated. "When you've got a really long scroll and you want to display it, you hang it on the wall. If it's a big scroll, you just hang it higher. Just like those ones we saw in the field trip to the ninja museum a couple of years ago."

"So you will hang it on a tree?" Lee suggested.

The weapons girl shook her head. "That would restrict me too much. If we keep going outside the village, we might go far enough that we're somewhere where there isn't any nearby trees to rely upon. No, I've got a better idea. Stand back and watch a weapons mistress at work."

Opening the scroll slightly, she cocked her arm back and threw it into the air, putting enough spin to cause the long strip of paper to ascend to the sky in a spiralling pattern. A moment later, she jumped, adding chakra so that she leapt with enough speed to make it seem like she teleported into the air. In one blindingly quick motion she bit her thumb, drawing blood, and raised her hand to activate the summons.

Unfortunately, she had put too much spin into her initial throw, making the scroll paper rapidly funnel to a smaller and smaller point the further it got up. As Tenten reached the apex of her jump and brought her arm up to activate the summoning symbols, her wrist got caught in the tightening funnel. Her eyes widened as the unfurling scroll quickly tightened around her like a constricting boa snake. After a couple of seconds, she was mummified, her body wrapped too tight to do anything.

"Hinata!" Lee shouted. The Hyuuga girl looked to him, seeing his arm outstretched. In a moment, she realised what he was after. With his new weights vastly slowing him down, he could barely jump off the ground. But his weights were on his legs - he wasn't wearing anything to slow down his arms.

"Right!" She grasped his wrist, grabbing on to him while he did the same to her to strengthen the connection. With a grunt and a half-turn, he flung her like a human projectile. Fighting the urge to scream at the sudden increase in velocity, Hinata desperately reached and grabbed her incapacitated teammate out of the air. Bringing her knees up, her feet's chakra flared in time to stick her to the tree in her flight path.

After a few quiet seconds, Tenten spoke up, her voice muffled by the paper. "Is that you Hinata?"

"Yes. Are… are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm just great." She gave the girl a thumbs-up with her right hand - the only thing besides her feet that was sticking out of the top or bottom of the scroll encasement. "Could you guys be careful when you get me out of this? I really don't want to have to buy a new scroll."

-x--x--x-

"This paper is quite tough," Lee noted as he carefully unwound the unharmed scroll from his older teammate.

"It was made especially for summoning," Tenten explained as she patiently waited for her freedom. "Apparently they re-enforce the backing when they make it so that it can't be easily shredded by an enemy throwing a kunai at it or something."

After a few more seconds, they managed to untangle the girl from the scroll. She stood up slowly, checking herself for injury. "Thanks." Looking up at Hinata, she added, "Looks like we're even for the cat mission."

"Um…Well… that is I…"

"Tenten-san," Lee interjected as he saw that the flustered Hyuuga girl was having difficulty with being thanked. "Do you not remember what Gai-sensei said? There is no keeping score when you are on a team, so there is no 'being even' or 'owing you one'. Today, it was you who needed help. Tomorrow, it may be me or Hinata or even Gai-sensei. It does not matter who helps who in the team, so long as we help."

"Alright," Tenten agreed with a nod. "Now, let us never speak of this again."

"But-" Hinata raised her hand to protest.

"Ever." Tenten added.

-x--x--x-

When Gai ran into the clearing ten minutes later, he almost stumbled into a tree when he saw his oldest student throwing her scroll into the air, an intense look of concentration on her face. He looked on as she collected the scroll, rolled it up, hefted it carefully for a few moments, before throwing it into the air again.

"Good morning, team!" He greeted them. "Tenten, may I ask what you are trying to accomplish?"

The weapons girl looked at her teacher. "Just doing some aerodynamics tests. I need to get the paper to go in a spiral wide enough to jump into without getting wrapped up, but not too wide that I can't reach out and touch the scroll."

Gai nodded. "Ah, an interesting approach! May I suggest you try it like this?" He showed her a wrist movement.

After she repeated it a couple of times with an empty hand, she then picked her scroll up again. "Okay, let's try this." The scroll unfurled into the air, spiralling round and round as it rose. "Much better," Tenten said with a smile as the scroll slowly fluttered to the ground. "Thanks, Sensei."

"No problem!" her teacher replied with a laugh. "Now then," he said before he summoned a turtle. "We shall be performing a D-rank mission this afternoon after training. Lee, you need to adjust to those weights before we can increase them again. For now, work on the basic forms I've shown you. My turtle will spot you. Once you're finished, join us for sparring practice."

Lee nodded, falling into a basic gouken stance as the large red turtle looked on and occasionally shouted out encouragement in eerie mimicry of their sensei. As his pant legs rode up during some of his more strenuous moves, you could just see the bottom of several small iron bars that were strapped to his ankles

"Tenten," Gai continued, "work on your special technique until you decide that you have it down. If you feel that you are ready before the end of today's training, then you may also join us for the sparring session."

"Right," the weapons girl replied, her attention focussed on her wrist as she moved it a few different ways while she thought about how she could improve the technique that Gai had shown her. "Maybe I could try jumping first and opening the scroll while in the air," she mused.

"Hinata, you'll train with me today." With that, Gai moved to the other side of the clearing, his last student following him.

-x--x--x-

Gai started her on something simple – she merely had to squarely strike his open palms with hers. That he was moving his palms around in a random pattern and fast enough that they were creating blurry after-images was a minor detail. She was putting all of her concentration into striking his palms – left, then right, then left. When he started to speak, she almost faltered for a moment as her mind split its attention between attacking and listening.

"Hinata, I wished to speak to you about something." His voice was low – just barely loud enough to be heard over the occasional sound of the striking of their palms.

"Ah… yes, Sensei?"

"The Hokage was most pleased with our teams performance on our first C-rank mission."

"Oh. That's… um, that's good, isn't it?"

"It is, yes. It also means that we will likely be sent on more in the near future. But I cannot help but worry. You see, Lee's training has reached a critical juncture. For the next several months he will be far slower than normal as he continually adjusts to the weights I shall be giving him."

Hinata nodded. Tenten and herself had suddenly found themselves beating the boy so badly in their sparring matches that she could barely stand to give him a chakra-less poke, let alone a full Jyuken strike. "Did you… did you want us to help protect him on missions?"

"Absolutely not! No more than you would for Tenten, in any case. You should always offer your teammate a hand to steady them when they fall, but what you must not do is drag them to their feet. Sooner or later there will be a mission where one of us is not available, or where you are needed to fill a gap on another team. When that happens, someone could die from expecting a helping hand from someone who is not there. Each of us must be capable of standing on our own two feet, or we will fall when we are least prepared for it. No, if we help train him properly now while we are outside of combat, he will be able to shine in battle no matter what burdens he carries."

"Um… okay."

Gai nodded. "In that light, I shall need your help."

"What… what do you need me to do?"

He stopped moving his palms, letting her strike them once more before he dropped his arms to his sides as a signal for her to stop. "Lee must realise the true measure of how the weights affect him now, so that he can begin to adjust his fighting style to compensate. There will be no forgiveness from any enemy that he encounters on the field. For that reason, you must give your all while sparring with him. Pain, after all, is a lesson that all ninja can learn from, while death only educates the survivors. If we are to see Lee reach the full bloom of his springtime of youth, we must do our best to let him test himself against the full range of our abilities. I dread to think of the consequences if we were to do otherwise."

Hinata stared at him for a few moments as her desire to not hurt the ones she cared about warred with itself. She had seen the terrible power of her clan's fighting style in person at three years old when her father had eliminated the jounin that had kidnapped her. But Gai was right too – while Tenten was decent in taijutsu, the weapons girl's true skills lay in mid-range combat. Close range combat was the core of her style, not Tenten's, and so it was her responsibility to help Lee learn how to defend against it. If Lee grew used to fighting someone who did not give their all, then wouldn't she be just as responsible for his death as the person wielding the kunai that eventually broke his guard and stabbed him? Had she been hobbling his dreams of becoming a great ninja by holding back all this time?

Her eyes cleared as she came to a decision. "I'll… I'll give it my all! I promise!" She smiled and gave her teacher a thumbs-up, who grinned back at her.

-x--x--x-

"Yosh!" Lee shouted as he dropped into a ready stance. "Shall we begin, Hinata-san?"

The Hyuuga girl nodded, raising her hands to a seal and activating her doujutsu.

Her male teammate blinked at this unusual move – she generally didn't activate her Byakugan for sparring unless she was in a two-on-one match. After a moment, he shook his head and shouted, "Right! Here I come!"

One flick of her head to the right to avoid the first punch, two blocks with her left arm to stop the next attacks, and three seconds after the match Lee was on the ground, wheezing from the hard (but thankfully chakra-less) palm strike he took to the sternum. He looked up at the small girl in shock, while Tenten (who had been keeping one eye on the combat) stared at Hinata while her scroll landed upon and started piling atop her head.

"I… I'm sorry!" the Hyuuga girl apologised.

"Sorry?" Lee shook his head. "Hinata-san, do not be sorry, because that was outstanding! Your flames are really stoked high today." He pushed himself to his feet as quickly as his weights would allow. "You have to let me try again."

"Um… okay."

It took him nearly thirty seconds to go down this time. He sat there, and looked up at her with disappointment etched on his face. "You were not really trying that time, were you?"

Hinata almost denied it, but seeing the look of excitement he had when she tried her hardest turn into disappointment when she didn't, she closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head 'no'. "It… it won't happen again, Lee-kun."

"Yosh!" Pulling himself to his feet he smiled and said, "If you are prepared to not hold back, then neither will I! Get ready!"

-x--x--x-

When Lee fell for the tenth time, his lip bleeding, Hinata again broke her guard. "Lee-kun! Are you okay?"

The boy carefully touched his lip for a moment, before smiling through his pain. "I am great! Thank you for asking, Hinata-san." Shakily he rose to his feet. "Shall we try again?"

"I think that's enough for now, Lee," Gai interjected. "As you can see, you will need to give your all to overcome the disadvantage you currently endure. Go do five hundred chin-ups to start getting your arms used to supporting your new weight."

"Yes, Sensei!" Lee turned from his teacher to his sparring partner and bowed lightly to her. "Thank you, Hinata-san."

"For… for what?"

"For taking me seriously. For the first time since we became a team, you fought against me like you would against Gai-sensei. I do not know what I did to be worthy of this, but I will work twice as hard to overcome these weights so that I can return the favour to you as soon as possible."

Hinata winced, feeling the couple of areas where he managed to tag her throb painfully. She was in for some painful matches once he got his speed back to normal.

"So," Tenten's light voice drawled from her right. Hinata turned to see the weapons girl limbering up. "If you're taking Lee seriously now, I certainly hope that you'll fight me properly as well. Because from now on I'm not going to hold back anything either."

Hinata gulped at the slightly eager look in the other girl's eyes as Tenten dropped into a ready stance. Tenten was not as good as Lee when it came to taijutsu, but the weapons girl wasn't weighed down like he was. This was probably going to hurt.

-x--x--x-

The Hyuuga heiress tentatively moved her jaw with her fingers, wincing at the pain that caused.

"You okay?" Tenten asked as she limped up to her opponent.

"Yes." She winced, and added, "But it… it does hurt a little to speak."

"Yeah, that one's sure to bruise," the weapons girl agreed cheerfully. "Good match though – I hope your jaw doesn't look too bad tomorrow."

"It's… it's okay." She wiggled her jaw a little more, and felt a little relief as it seemed to click into place. "I can make some ointment for it."

"You make healing ointments?" The weapons girl shook her head at this new piece of information. "If you've got an interest in medicine, why don't you ask Gai if he knows any healing jutsu?"

Hinata shook her head. There were many things that were frowned upon in the Main House, especially for the heiress of the clan. Her hobby of cooking, for example, would have been seen as being beneath the person who could one day lead her house. No clan leader should have the time for such a menial pursuit, they would say. The use of genjutsu or ninjutsu was also frowned upon as needlessly flashy in any situation where powering through with the Jyuken could be done instead. But these things were merely frowned upon, and could be tolerated. Beyond that in the Main House, there were two great taboos that were, ironically, allowable for members of the Branch House.

The first was to cover the forehead – to do so was to appear as if you were branded with the curse mark of the Branch House. It simply was not done – Main House members even avoided placing towels on their brows while they were taking baths, in case it was misinterpreted.

The second great taboo in the Main House was the learning of medical jutsus. With the exception of Hinata, the Main House were normally insulated from the ninja life - trained in-house with the expectation that they would never take on a ninja rank and therefore never need to fight outside of arranged duels or in the defence of their home. To learn medical jutsu would be to admit to the possibility of defeat. It would be admitting to an impossible weakness when you were supposed to be the main wielders of a style of taijutsu that the clan considered to have a perfect defence. Even her medical ointments were skirting close to the taboo, and she only dared create them due to them being seen as an offshoot of the acceptable practice of plant and herb tending. "I… I'm not allowed. But why don't you?"

"Me? Beyond your basic first aid, I'm not interested in being a medic. I probably don't have the chakra control, either."

"But… but isn't Tsunade-sama your hero?"

"Oh, that? No, no, it's not her medical skills that I admire her for – I've got no interest in that. It's her physical strength that impressed me. You know, they say that she was stronger than any guy. She could crush boulders with her bare hands – can you imagine what you could do with strength like that? I mean… wow!"

"Oh." Curiosity piqued, she looked at her teammate. Despite scoring higher on the ninjutsu exams than her, Tenten had not maintained those skills since leaving the academy, seemingly content to concentrate on her throwing and sparring skills. She couldn't help but wonder why the weapons girl was letting her talent go to waste in that area. "What about... um… ninjutsu? Are… are you not interested in that either?"

"Hinata," Tenten said with a sigh and a shake of her head, "on top of the speed and accuracy exercises I'm doing, I am also currently trying to gain a mastery of thirty-six different weapon styles spread amongst twenty different weapons. I really, honestly do not think it would be wise to spread my time out to include ninjutsu training until I have mastered my core weaponry skills. The reason why high level ninja with well-rounded skills like Gai-sensei's rival are so rare is because you'd need to be a serious genius to become a successful and powerful ninja-jack-of-all-trades at a young age. Give me a couple of years, and I should be able to spend some time on developing my non-core skills."

The Hyuuga girl did not reply for a few moments, her gaze distant as if she was holding an internal conversation, before she nodded. "You are right, Tenten-san. It… it was rude of me to ask that of you. Excuse me."

Ten seconds later, she was in front of her teacher. "Gai-sensei, I… I have a request."

-x--x--x-

The three genin walked into a fenced crop field that lay within the outskirts on the village. Lee, despite being the most weighed down, had volunteered to pull the cart that was laden with the supplies they needed to complete their newest D-rank mission.

"So where did Gai-sensei go?" Tenten asked as she leaned on the cart handle, looking down at the stacked bags within.

"He's, ah, doing a favour for me," Hinata replied.

"Well, okay. This stuff's not harmful to humans, is it? It'd be nice to get through a D-rank without sending someone to the Hospital for once."

Lee hefted one of the heavy bags, reading the label. "It claims to be safe for humans, although it does suggest avoiding breathing in large quantities. It also says that results are best when applied aerially." He looked down at the bags and noted, "If we are to apply all of these, then it looks like this will take a while."

"Maybe not." Tenten smiled, adding, "I've got an idea." She pulled several kunai and some shuriken with curved hook blades out of the kunai holder strapped to her thigh and dangled them to indicate they were on wires. "I can use the kunai to initially shred the bags, and the shuriken's blades to catch the shredded remains once it's emptied out. Lee, how far do you think you can throw one of those bags?"

Lee smiled. "I believe I can throw it far enough. I like the way you think, Tenten-san."

Hinata certainly didn't like the way her teammates were thinking, based on how well their D-rank missions went when one of them got creative, but decided to say nothing to dissuade them. She quickly activated her Byakugan and scanned the field, sighing in relief when she saw that the only other person nearby was on the other side of the field's fence. At least they wouldn't inconvenience anyone this time.

-x--x--x-

The boy adjusted his sunglasses as he saw his prey. Finally, after skipping three days of the academy, and after two nights of endless, sleepless hunting he had found it. The rumours circulating among his clan had been true, for here it was, resting on the plant stalk in all of its beauty. His colony buzzed, reflecting his rare excitement as he stared at it through the fence – this bug, this wonder of the insect world, this rarest of the wild strains of kikaichu that no Aburame had yet managed to include into their breeding programs. Here it was, his for the taking. And its red thorax meant that it was a breeding female!

Slowly, carefully he pulled his bug catching kit out of his trenchcoat. He had to be very cautious – this insect was notoriously sensitive to shock. If he surprised it too much, the female's thorax would change from a vibrant red to a dull purple, and it would never lay another egg again.

Just as he was about to climb the fence, he heard the faintest sound that made his head turn. Flying through the air was a large bag full of something. He looked at it, puzzled, before the receptacle exploded into dust. For a moment he saw sunlight reflecting off dull metal, and he realised that someone had thrown a kunai to destroy the bag.

Feeling faint horror as he saw the dust fall, he quickly sacrificed one of his flying bugs to check out the air contaminant before it reached his quarry. Thankfully the bug quickly returned, reporting the dust to be fertiliser, not insecticide. Resisting the smallest urge to sigh in relief, his eyes locked back onto the bug just in time to see another bag explode directly over the insect, violently spraying the plant in fertiliser dust. A few moments later, as the dust cloud cleared, he could only stand and watch as the bug's thorax deepened from red to purple as it shook some fertiliser off its wings.

The boy had no visible reaction, although the sound of buzzing around him deeply intensified.

-x--x--x-

The green-clad jounin blinked as he spotted his quarry exiting a book store of dubious pedigree. "My eternal rival! Just the man I was looking for!"

"This is really not a good time, Gai," Kakashi noted as he looked up from the first chapter of his brand new reading material.

"My apologies, but I need your help."

Kakashi blinked. "My help?"

Gai nodded.

"As in you're not here for a challenge?"

"Only if it is one that is quickly resolved. I'm in quite a hurry."

The silver-haired jounin reluctantly lowered his book. "All right. I'll bite. What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you happened to have any chakra sensitive paper? It is not an item I have ever had need of before."

"Oh? And why do you need it now?"

"My student, Hinata, has expressed an interest in learning ninjutsu in order to expand my teams versatility."

"Hmm." Kakashi thought about the four months of cold glares and snide whispers that had followed him whenever he passed a Hyuuga clansman after he had failed their little golden child, Neji. He may have acted like he didn't notice it, but there was several times where he'd come close to performing the Thousand Years of Pain on the whole lot of them. How would their clan react – one that upheld their Byakugan and Jyuken style as the only requirements of a true ninja – if their heiress began learning ninjutsu?

Eye crinkling into a smile, he pulled a piece of folded paper out of his vest and threw it to the taijutsu master. "Sure, here you go."

Gai stared at him for a moment. "I am grateful, of course, but may I ask why you happened to have one of them on you?"

Kakashi shrugged. "I was using it as a bookmark. Later." With a wave, he started to walk off.

Gai looked down at the paper in his hands. Shuddering a little he silently promised to himself that he would scrub his hands with soap 500 times after he completed his mission. Well, it was said that the path of a ninja was often perilous. And what Hinata didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

-x--x--x-

Hinata looked at the paper. "Thank you Sensei. Where… can I ask where you got this?"

"I have my sources," Gai replied. "You seem to know what it is you're holding. Do you know how to use it?"

The Hyuuga girl nodded. She remembered her class on elemental affinity and the chakra paper that was shown but pointedly not passed around to the students.

"Good. Now, are you sure that you wish to pursue this path? There is still much to learn in the ways of taijutsu, and I am aware that ninjutsu techniques are famously not looked kindly upon in your clan's Main House."

Hinata nodded. "I'm… yes, I'm definitely sure. Sensei, I'm the only one who can do it. Lee cannot, and Tenten is far too... um... far too busy learning her styles. I have far less styles to learn than... than her, and I know that knowledge of some ninjutsu is vital for a team. I cannot be selfish – it will have to be me. Also, there... there are the techniques we discussed that can help me and my lack of reach."

Gai shook his head. "I am not sure I agree with you on ninjutsu being vital. There are many facets of taijutsu that I have yet to show you, Lee or Tenten that would put paid to almost any ninja magic you would care to name. But I cannot begrudge your request, of course, and if you believe that this will help you achieve your goal then I will keep my promise to help you get there."

"Then," Hinata stopped, thought about it for a moment, and continued, "Then maybe I can do this as something extra, above what you want me to do for taijutsu?"

"You do realise that you'll have little spare time left if you wish to study both, correct?"

The Hyuuga girl nodded.

"Yosh! Very well, then I shall help you however I can. I think that my turtles will be able to show you a few ninjutsu tricks that even I don't know. But for now - the paper, if you would."

Concentrating her chakra, she soon had a sodden piece of paper in her hands.

"Very good, Hinata. You clearly have a water affinity. That is not our ideal situation, but then if we all lived an ideal life we would not need ninjas, now would we? You shall need to prepare yourself for some frustrating times to learn what you need. We shall get started on your instruction after we complete our next round of training." He paused for a moment, and added, "You may also want to wash your hands in the meantime."

"Really?"

Gai nodded. "Oh yes. It's always best to do that after handling chakra paper."

-x--x--x-

The next morning was spent much like most other mornings – exercise, then instruction from their sensei, and then sparring. Unlike other days, Hinata had brought a small bag with her. After seeing Tenten's limp yesterday – a limp that she caused - she had spent much of last night crushing and preparing a herbal mix. After their bone-jarring sparring finished for the day (Lee had, with a disturbing relish, taken to the challenge of overcoming his weights in order to achieve the goal of hitting her), the Hyuuga girl hesitantly brought two jars out of the bag and presented them to her teammates.

"Um… here. They'll… they'll help you with any minor injuries that you have," she explained. She cringed, waiting for the outcry from the pair on why she had not made these months ago. She was still berating herself over that fact as well. How many painful bruises had her team suffered that she could have helped with?

"Really? You made it after all? Thanks Hinata!" Tenten smiled at her.

"Yes, that was very thoughtful," Lee agreed. "I shall try it out immediately!" As the boy kept his word and started slathering the medical goo over his knuckles, Gai looked on with a smile.

"It is good to see the bonds of teamship tighten ever further," their teacher noted. "Now then, it is that time again when we part ways for the day. Hinata, stay back so that I can show you that technique we discussed."

Hinata nodded, while Lee went back to his training log to begin his afternoon of self-directed exercise, and Tenten left to help her father at his shop.

-x--x--x-

Hinata smiled as she walked into the general store. Her team had split up to complete its latest D-rank mission, as they were starting to gain confidence that the jinx on their assignment completion was behind them. Tenten was watering the client's garden, Lee was taking out the garbage, and all that was left was a single purchase to help brighten the old lady's afternoon. It had certainly been a pleasant day for a walk (well, run, actually – Gai encouraged her to use every opportunity to build her stamina).

Noticing the middle-aged lady who had entered the line a few seconds after her, she smiled and said, "Oh! Um… After you."

The lady smiled, thanking her. Hinata couldn't help but smile again when she saw the lady order the same magazine that she was after. It must be very popular with the older generation. A minute later, it was her turn.

"One… um, one copy of," she double-checked her list to be absolutely sure, "Gardeners Monthly, please."

The cashier shook his head. "I'm sorry Miss, but we just sold out."

Her eyes widened. "S… Sold out?"

The cashier nodded. "Yeah, to the lady before you. Bit unusual normally, but this month's issue included a photo spread of the Fire Lord's personal gardens. They haven't allowed photographers in there for the past two decades, so plenty of people were interested in seeing it." Seeing the horror starting to creep onto the girl's face, he quickly added, "Look, I know the two closest stores have also sold out, because I got some of their customers coming in. There's three other places you can try."

"Wh…where? Please tell me!"

-x--x--x-

"Where is that girl?" Tenten asked as she, Lee and Gai ran down the street.

"Do you think she was injured somehow?" Lee looked at his teammates. "Look, I am slowing us down. There is no need to wait for me, you should go ahead to find her."

"There is no need for that," Gai replied. "There she is."

The jounin and his two genin team members slowed to a halt in front of their youngest member, who was sitting on a bench outside of a grocery store, her head staring at the ground.

"Hinata?" Tenten cautiously approached the girl. "What's wrong?"

"I… I checked them all," the Hyuuga girl slowly replied. "There's not a one. Not a single store has it. Not a s…single copy anywhere. It's… it's sold out."

"Hinata, it's not your fault if the stores have all sold out of a magazine," Gai gently pointed out.

"But… but it is, Sensei." Hinata spoke up, her voice strained. "I let someone cut in line in the first store. They… they got the last copy. This _is_ my fault. I… I failed our mission."

Tenten shook her head. "Hinata, we've failed D-ranks before. Sure it sucks, but we should just view it as a learning experience and get on with the next one."

The Hyuuga girl shook her head. "You don't understand. _I _failed. That means I have to… It's… I… I can't!" With those words, she leapt to her feet and ran.

"Hinata!" Gai cried out. After a moment, he shook his head, and turned to his other students. "Tenten, Lee, go back to the client, explain the situation and please apologise on the team's behalf. Then report the mission to the mission bureau for me. I will see you both at training tomorrow." With one last nod, he jogged off in Hinata's direction.

"I don't understand," Tenten muttered to her remaining teammate. "What just happened? Why was she so upset over a D-rank? And what did Hinata mean when she said she 'can't'?"

Lee thought about it for a few seconds before he clapped his fist into his palm in understanding. "The self-rule!"

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"Tenten-san, it has to be the self-rule that Hinata-san made when we all promised to not to be the cause of another mission failure."

The weapon girl's eyes widened. "You may be right. But what's the problem? Didn't she just promise she'd spar with her father? What's so terrible about that?"

Lee hesitated, before admitting, "I... I do not know, Tenten-san. But something is certainly not right about this. Not right at all."


	5. Chapter 5

**The Lavender Beast of Konoha**

**Summary**: In a fit of hubris, Hiashi forced Hinata to attend the same Academy class as Neji. Having never been in the same class as Naruto, who shall serve as her inspiration to grow stronger when she graduates? AU Team Gai: Lee, Tenten, and Hinata. Gen for now.

**Disclaimer**: Naruto was created by Kishimoto Masashi. No disrespect is intended in its use.

-x--x--x-

She leaned on a red-painted bridge, her head cradled in her arms as she stared into the water below. "I don't think I can do it," she admitted out loud after she felt the vibrations that indicated someone had leaned on the rail next to her.

There were a few seconds of silence, before Gai spoke. "It is up to you, Hinata. It is your self-rule, after all. No-one besides you can enforce its conditions. I shall not judge you for it, no matter what your decision is."

She shook her head. "I… I know I should, but… You don't… you don't know my father."

"Not well, no," he agreed. "Still, seeking the approval of the ones you love can often be more terrifying than facing a veritable horde of angry assassins. I can certainly understand how frightening it can be to disappoint those that you admire or love. But in the end, my student, you must ask yourself one question. Which situation would you prefer to choose: facing your father should you enact your self-rule, or facing your young teammates should you not?"

With those words, he gently pushed himself off the bridge rail and started to walk away. After a few steps, a soft voice interrupted his stride.

"I… I can't."

He closed his eyes, an inaudible sigh escaping from his lips.

"Not… not by myself. If I do it… then will you… will you be there to support me?"

Gai grinned as he turned back to her. "Hinata, I will always be there to support all of my youthful students. It's the promise of a lifetime." His teeth shone as he sealed his pledge by posing like a nice guy. After a few seconds, he dropped the pose. "Now then, you cannot have a proper sparring match without warming up first. Follow me."

-x--x--x-

Two figures ran around the outskirts of the village, their bodies moving fast enough to seem to be a blur to most who observed.

"Sensei," Hinata blurted as she barely kept up with her teacher, who was setting a punishing pace. Her body leaned forward and her arms trailed behind her like the wings of an airplane, as she adopted the common ninja running form, while he pumped his arms in the running style more commonly used by civilians. "Why are we doing this?"

"We're stoking the fires of youth!" Gai shouted in return as he started to go even faster. "Do you feel it, Hinata? That is the euphoria that only comes from pushing yourself as hard as you can. Embrace it! Harness it! Use it! Push yourself faster, my student. Faster until you feel like you're flying. Then, and only then should you keep your self-rule!"

-x--x--x-

The banging of the door violently sliding open abruptly broke the calming quiet of the Hyuuga clan leader's study.

"Father! I challenge you!"

Hiashi sighed as he heard the sliding door skip in its tracks from its forceful opening. "Not now, Hanab-" The clan leader's voice trailed off as he looked up from his documents to see his elder daughter, not his younger. Certainly his two daughters voices were different, but he could be forgiven for his mistake – his older daughter had never spoken to him in such a forceful tone. Not once, not ever. His face remained impassive, but the ink brush he had been holding silently dropped from his suddenly loose hand.

Hinata stood there, still catching her breath from shouting so soon after her hectic run. The girl could feel the clammy feeling of her clothes sticking to her, the realisation slowly dawning that she was standing in front of her father while still soaking in the sweat of her race with her sensei. She felt her limbs going cold as the confidence from her adrenaline rush began to wither away under her father's gaze. Her body began to tremble as she registered the calculating look in his eyes. As her mouth opened to apologise for her forceful entry, her teacher's hand rested on her shoulder. She looked back at him for a moment, her trembling stopping as she registered the smile on his face, before she turned back to the clan leader.

"Um… that is… Father, w…we have not sparred in over a year. I…" she looked down at the floor for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked up and continued, "I wish to test myself against you!"

The silence stretched between them. For a few seconds, Hiashi made no visible reaction. Then, he nodded.

-x--x--x-

As they walked to the Main House dojo, with Hiashi several steps in the lead, Gai leant down so that he could whisper to his youngest pupil. "Remember, my student, that this is not about winning or losing or showing anything to your opponent. This is about proving to yourself that you have become stronger. Fight smart, fight well, but above all else, fight with everything that your youth can give you. And know that above all else, I am proud of you Hinata." As they reached the dojo's entrance, he imparted on her his final words before letting her go through before him. "Now then, show him what hard work and determination can accomplish."

-x--x--x-

As Hinata quickly ran through some stretching exercises in the five minutes preparation time that was allowed her in a challenge, she tried to distract herself with her surroundings. The Main House dojo was, like the rest of the Hyuuga clan holdings, austere and functional and not much more. Only the more discerning eye could have spotted the high level of workmanship involved in the perfectly aligned floorboards and roof beams, and guessed at the true price paid to master builders to construct this training room.

In theory, the only witness to her fight would be Gai – in theory, at least, since she was in the middle of the holdings of a clan full of people who could see through these surrounding walls whenever they chose. Privacy was an illusion in this household, and the Byakugan was also known for seeing through all illusions. Still, she was very glad to see that none of the Elders were physically in the dojo for the coming spar – even with her instructor's support she didn't think she could have faced a fight under their direct gaze.

While she was glad that her teacher was there, she was conversely glad that her teammates were not. She did not think that they would have understood this. From their conversations and her observations she suspected that both had chosen their path in life, rather than having it chosen for them. They worked and trained in order to further their own expectations of what they could do. Maybe in time she could tell them what it meant to train with a clan's Expectations in mind.

She glanced at her green-clad sensei, who was standing out of the way, almost against a wall. Clutched in his hands were her sandals, and draped over his arm was her jacket – as with all of her previous spars in the Hyuuga Main Family, she would wear just her basic black pants and top for this match. When he spotted her gaze upon him, he gave her a nice guy pose, his confidence in her shining almost as blindingly as the light reflecting off his teeth.

No. No, she had to admit to herself that she wasn't working just to meet Expectations any more. The constant stamina exercises, Gai's special non-Jyuken taijutsu moves, and the ninjutsu she had just started to learn – none of these were things that her clan Expected her to know.

"Very well," her father's voice broke through her contemplation. She turned to face him as he said, "You may begin."

She nodded, dropping into her initial stance while he remained standing with arms at his side. It was a clear indication that he did not think that he needed to adopt a stronger defensive posture. Hesitantly, she formed the signs required to activate her doujutsu. After her vision expanded, her nerves settled a little at the sight of her teacher looking on, his face serious and calm. If he wasn't worried, then she shouldn't show it either, right?

The girl took a deep breath, blocking out her nervousness as best as she could, before she charged forward. As she drew closer, she launched herself off the floor into a flying kick in the hopes that her father would be surprised by the unusual tactic. The almost casual ease with which he blocked and deflected her kick on his forearm indicated he wasn't as shocked as she had hoped.

Using her other foot to push herself off his arm, she dropped to the floor before spinning into a sweeping kick to take out his legs. When he easily avoided the attack by jumping back, she launched to her feet, her palms glowing as she switched to the more traditional hand attacks of the Jyuken style. She concentrated on hitting his arms as she attacked, as she knew that his counter-attack would be punishing if she attempted to get past his reach to get to his chest. Each strike was deflected, however, with no damage done. It did not help that she had to be very careful of what she was doing – her father's height and reach advantage meant that he could keep her far away from him while still being close enough to easily reach her.

After five minutes of this she was very grateful for her sensei's regime of exercises. She was soaked in sweat, but that was as much from her earlier run as it was from this battle. Five months ago she would have collapsed in exhaustion by now.

But stamina alone would not get her through this. With her Jyuken failing to breach Hiashi's defences, she started to mix in some of the taijutsu moves that Gai had taught her. Various acrobatic kicks were mixed into regular palm strikes.

At seven minutes into the fight, her father's eyes narrowed. Sidestepping her next attack, he casually twisted around her, pushing on her back to force her away from him. She turned, recovering her balance, just in time to see him mouth one word and drop into an attack stance. "Byakugan."

It was probably only the thought of looking weak in front of her sensei after all his encouragement that stopped her from flinching at the extra level of harshness that the Hyuuga doujutsu leant to her father's eyes. Her eyes quickly identified the intention of his attacking stance, as he was not trying to mask his movements. Although it had been a while since they had sparred, Hinata had fought him often enough to guess his most likely target – her right shoulder to cut off the chakra to her dominant hand. After that he would either take out her other arm, or else take out one of her legs. It was not that her father was usually so predictable in his fights – she could never read what he was going to do when he was up against Hanabi, for example. It was just that he didn't really put his all into his fights against her. Why would he when the same attack continually broke through her guard and defeated her? Even now, after all of her additional training, it was unlikely that she would be able to dodge it – his reach still exceeded her agility.

She was faster, stronger, and capable of lasting much longer in a fight than the last time she had fought him. But none of that would mean a thing if he took her out now. She hadn't proven anything – not to herself, not to her father, and not to her teacher. It couldn't end like this!

In the split-second that he started his attack, she made her decision.

Jyuken relied on pushing chakra through the fingertips or palm into the tenketsu of your opponent. While it could precisely target specific tenketsu if you had the talent and pinpoint accuracy required to do it, the Hyuuga style of palm strikes leant itself to causing wide damage on multiple points at once. This was because chakra was channelled through the entire palm, which was a far larger area than the needle-width tenketsu points. A side effect of such attacks was that it not only attacked the tenketsu, but all of the underlying internal muscles and organs as well. Even a glancing blow from a Jyuken palm strike could be extremely painful.

Instead of angling her own counter-strike to go for her father's chest (which would have failed, given his far superior reach advantage), or angling it so that it deflected his strike (which may work once or twice, but would eventually fail due to his superior speed), she chose another option.

Palm met palm in an explosion of intermingled chakra. Their hands were blown back from the mutual chakra exchange, their bodies twisting away from the forces exerted. Hinata fell to the floor, her face contorted in pain, while her father took a few steps back.

Hiashi recovered first, taking the time to further step out of the girl's attack range in order to check his palm. At first he had thought that she was attempting some unusual new blocking style that her teacher had shown her. When he had realised her true intention at the last moment, battle instincts had caused him to release chakra into her palm, much as she had done to him. Some of his tenketsu points had been closed, which meant that he would find it difficult to perform Jyuken strikes with his dominant hand. But his Byakugan told him that Hinata was in a worse position – every one of the tenketsu points in her smaller hand had been blown by his strike. This in itself was not bad – the points could be reopened – but chakra had also flooded into her entire hand, damaging the underlying tissues. She wouldn't have full use of her hand for quite a few days.

"Sometimes we must sacrifice an advantage in order to obtain one," the green-clad jounin noted from the sidelines.

Hinata nodded, her pained face gradually calming as she used her good hand to push herself to her feet.

Hiashi's eyebrows rose. A sacrificial attack – taking out one of your enemy's weapons by sacrificing one of your own in the process. A curious tactic, but ultimately self-defeating. Even if his daughter managed to do it to his other palm (which she would _not _manage, now that he was aware of her kamikaze plan), he still had access to several techniques that did not require the use of his hands. She could not win this way.

"The only advantage gained here was in slightly prolonging this session," The clan leader noted as he shifted to a new stance, using the arm with the damaged palm as a counter-balance. He beckoned to her. "Come then. Show me you have learned something besides a willingness for self-mutilation in the past few months."

"Y… yes father." The Hyuuga girl took up a stance, placing her damaged hand in the less dominant position like her father had. A moment later, she was racing forward.

The clan leader took her attack without trouble, his hand blocking her Jyuken strikes, his body swaying back from the occasional kicks she threw in to try and take him by surprise. After half-a-minute of taking the defence, he flowed around her next attack, letting her arm fly past him as he shoved a chakra-less palm strike into her chest. His arm drew back for another strike while he kept moving forward to stay within her defence.

After initially stumbling back, she started to move with the momentum rather than fighting it, bending her spine and arms back at an angle that most people could not have copied without wrenching their shoulders out of alignment. As her hands landed on the floor, she used her momentum to start pushing into a handstand. Her legs scissored up, attempting to trap Hiashi's attacking arm, but he drew back in a small jump to escape her attempted leg hold. The Hyuuga leader couldn't help but notice that she wouldn't have been able to maintain the hold anyway – her handstand had quickly collapsed as her damaged palm could not maintain her weight. The girl used her still-good palm to push up and twist her body, turning her collapse into a spinning crouch.

"I taught all of my students some basic moves," Gai continued in his commentary. "Hinata proved to be most adapt at the highly acrobatic manoeuvres."

Hiashi chose to not respond to the jounin this time.

Hinata stared at her father, desperately trying to think of something else to try. She was moving around far more than he was, which meant that she was expending much more energy. This just wasn't working. But what could she do?

Mentally she reviewed her daily spars with her teammates. What tactics had they used which were most successful against her? Quickly she threw out the ones that worked due to Lee and Tenten's height and reach advantage. After a moment, she hit upon something that might work if she was lucky in the way her father reacted.

Decision made, she ran towards the clan leader. As she drew within his attack range she dropped to her knees as his palm narrowly missed her head. Her good hand came up, ready to attack the tenketsu in his leg, but he had not moved the way she had thought he would, so she missed the tenketsu point, barely grazing his leg.

His leg was not in the place she expected because it was being used to support the other leg, as Hiashi counterattacked by kicking her in the chest. Hinata felt the air explode from her lungs as her back struck the dojo wall. She hung there a brief moment, before gravity started to slide her down the wall.

Her father looked at her for a moment before turning and heading for the exit.

As her eyes started to close, she could see her sensei moving towards her. What would he think of her, she wondered. She still hadn't proven anything – her father had tossed her around the dojo like a limp rag doll. After her teacher had put aside so much of his personal time to help her learn ninjutsu. After he had done nothing but encourage her while building her strength and skills up. After he had done so much for her, she could not fail in front of him!

"No!"

Hiashi paused, turning to face her as she struggled to her feet.

"I… I did not concede yet, Father."

Gai looked at his student, his face unreadable. "Are you sure, Hinata?"

"Yes. Thank you, Sensei. I… I am sure."

He nodded before dashing back out of the way.

"Very well," Hiashi as he moved back to the center of the dojo. "One last chance. Come at me, then."

After gathering herself for a few moments, Hinata nodded and charged towards her father. She put her all into her next attacks, pushing her strength, will and power into a series of chakra laden strikes as she tried to shut down his remaining hand. For three minutes she pushed her father hard enough that he took one step back, then two, and soon enough to five.

On his sixth step, he grabbed her attacking hand's wrist with his slightly damaged hand while he used his good hand to attack. There was the briefest moment for her eyes to widen, before she was falling back from another blow to her chest.

He looked down at her as she struggled to get back up again for a third time. After a few seconds, he shook his head. "Enough. This is a spar, not a fight to the death. The match is over."

Hinata stopped her struggles, her gaze dropping to the floor. After a few more seconds, her father spoke again.

"Hinata." He waited until the girl looked at him, before he continued. "That was-" he stopped, considering the right word. "Better."

Hinata's eyes widened, her eyes coming up to track him as the clan leader turned and walked to the dojo exit. He paused when he reached his girl's teacher.

"Maito Gai, was it not?"

The jounin nodded, eyes not moving from his student.

Hiashi studied him for a moment, before he spoke. "She seems to have finally found her will, but she must still get much stronger. I leave her in your hands."

-x--x--x-

She was still half-lying on the floor, supporting her weight on her good hand, when the green-clad jounin walked up to her.

"He didn't really try at all," she murmured as she stared at her damaged hand, which was covered in bright red burns. "But I did. I really tried." She blinked, trying to hold back her tears. "I swear I did, and I couldn't do anything. I'm… I'm not strong enough."

Gai sat down in front of her, crossing his legs as he looked at his student. After a lengthy silence, he spoke up. "I do not agree. Your father was not demonstrative, but I believe that he acknowledged your growth. However, if you do believe what you say… well then, there's really only one solution. I shall simply have to help you to get even stronger."

She looked up at him, her eyes widening at the easy smile and lack of recrimination on his face. She hesitated, before she nodded in response.

-x--x--x-

Hinata winced as her teacher gently tied off the bandage that covered the palm and wrist of her right hand.

"Are you sure that you do not wish to go to the hospital?" Gai asked as he put away his medical kit.

She shook her head. "No, thank you. The… the poultice I used will help it heal. It should be fine in a few days. And it's… it's a good reminder of the price of bad promises."

"Hinata." He rested his hands on her shoulders while looking at her with a serious expression. "There are no bad promises if you are promising from your heart. Today you did not do well against your father. Do not despair at this – instead, use it as an impetus to improve for the next time." He smiled, and added, "You have seen my eternal struggle against my own too-hip rival. For the 49 wins I have gained, I have also experienced 49 losses. I remember each of those losses just as fondly as I remember each of those wins, because they were all an opportunity to learn and improve. And after all, the day where we stop trying to improve is the day we should quit being ninja." He took his hands off her shoulders. "Now then, rest up. After training tomorrow, we shall be going on a mission."

Her eyes widened. "A… a mission? But what about… um, won't my injury be a burden?"

"There are no burdens to those with a ready spirit, Hinata – there are only opportunities for improvement." He stood, grinning as he added. "Tomorrow we shall use this opportunity to begin improving your ambidexterity."

-x--x--x-

In a seedy bar on the outskirts of a seedier town that was nestled in a neutral space on the border of the Land of Fire, an unkempt bandit was regaling his story to some acquaintances. "-and she wasn't even looking at them. Totally blind throws, I'm telling you! No-one could survive that girl once she decides to kill you."

His compatriots turned to each other, murmuring worriedly about the news. Everyone knew to avoid the jounin and chuunin ninja, but if even the genin were getting that good, then how would they ever sketch a living from stealing off of others?

"Idiots."

The word cut through the conversation, slicing it into silence. As one the bandits turned, eyes fixing on a man with a wiry build who was lounging nearby. His body was covered in a long travel coat made from the some tough materials as ninja flak vests, while his head was shrouded in darkness from shadows that were cast by the coat's rain hood.

"Why don't you shut it, hey?" The tale-telling bandit growled. "No-one asked for your opinion."

"And yet you will receive it anyway," the wiry man answered, taking down his hood to reveal a fairly nondescript face. What did draw the men's attention was the slashed symbol of the Grass nation that was tied around his neck. As the bandit drew back, his face paling as he realised he'd mouthed off to a missing-nin, the ninja smiled and asked, "You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

"Uh… no?"

"Good." A kunai appeared in his hand. He looked between the weapon and the men for a moment. "Watch, learn, and despair at your inadequacies." With a smirk, he casually flicked the throwing knife at the back of an extremely large and muscular man who was sitting at the bar. The bandits did not have time to blink when faster than sight, the large man's right arm shot back, his index finger catching the kunai's hilt ring. Momentum let the kunai swing around his finger a few times, but the large man did not make any other motion. Only when the weapon finally slowed and stopped did he turn around, his body moving at an almost leisurely pace. When he faced the bandits, they could see that he wore the same symbol as the man who had almost killed him.

"Must you involve me in your object lessons?" The large man rumbled as he threw the kunai back at the wiry man, who caught the weapon with ease.

As the large man turned back to his drink, the wiry man put away his weapon and looked at the bandits. "Do you see?" he asked. "Your terrifying bandit killer means nothing to a true ninja. Awareness of your surroundings and catching a weapon when it is thrown at you are no hard tasks at all for a chuunin such as me. I certainly have nothing to fear from some slip of a girl if that's the extent of her skills. And my friend over there, as you could see, is even better than I. There is nothing you can throw at him that he cannot catch. Nothing. His defence is absolute. Your little killer would not have a chance against him."

The survivor of the original attack looked at his companions, before looking at the man. His eyes narrowed at the indirect insults the man had made to his dead friends by inferring that their skills were not good enough. "Hmph," he snorted. "I bet she'd kill him too if he went after her."

There was a moment of silence. The bandit's eyes widened as the room seemed to darken. Looking down, he could see that a huge shadow was covering him, causing the drop in light. He turned around, his eyes soon catching in the gimlet eyes of the large man who had previously been at the bar.

"Really?" The man rumbled, his eyebrows shooting up to emphasise his disbelief at the bandit's words. "How much do you bet, then?"

-x--x--x-

Hinata walked into the training ground with her teacher beside her. Before she could blink, her two teammates jumped in front of her.

"Hinata-san, what happened to your hand?"

"Yeah, who did this to you?" Tenten's eyes narrowed. "Is this why you didn't want to spar with your father? Did he hurt you?"

"It… it's okay." Hinata waved her hands in a conciliatory gesture before she realised that it was bringing attention to her injury. She quickly crossed her hands behind her back, and added, "It was my fault entirely."

"Are you certain, Hinata-san? Because if you wish us to pursue this then Tenten and I shall gladly have words with the person who did that."

At that point, Gai's laughter rang around the field. "That's the spirit, Lee! If you're going to pick a rival then you should pick a powerful one." He frowned, and added, "Although it will take quite a while of strenuous training before you are ready to engage someone of the Hyuuga clan leader's calibre."

"So it was him?" Tenten frowned. "Damn it girl, I know you don't like confrontations but you can't let him do this to you!"

"Tenten, calm down." Gai waved his hands in a 'please stop' motion. "Hinata was telling the truth. Her injury was a result of her own attack as much as it was due to her father. Full Hyuuga sparring matches are dangerous at the best of times, after all. If Hinata doesn't wish to take it any further than that, then we should all respect her wishes."

The weapons girl looked unhappily at their leader for a few seconds before sighing and nodding. "Fine."

"Good. We shall begin our training today as usual, but we shall keep it shorter than normal. We shall be going on a C-rank mission after lunch."

"C-class? Great! Looks like I'll be able to buy that sansetsukon this month after all. Oh, and that reminds me." Tenten pulled a small bag out of her kunai pouch and tossed it to the pale-eyed girl next to her. "Here you go."

Hinata looked at the bag before hesitantly opening it. Inside was a small amount of money. "Um… what's this for?"

"Our mission yesterday." The weapons girl replied.

"But… but I failed that mission."

"Yeah, actually as it turns out, the client wasn't really expecting us to be able to get our hands on the magazine. Apparently she heard about it from some of her friends and thought it would be worth looking at, so she just requested it on the off chance that there'd still be a copy. When Lee and I tried to apologise for not getting it, she just laughed and said it was all right, before giving us a note to take back to the mission bureau to prove we'd completed her D-rank. So we picked up the pay, and here we are." Tenten shrugged in a 'oh-well' gesture as she finished off her tale.

"You… You mean I didn't have to… I could have…" Hinata's eyes widened as her brain shut down.

As the Hyuuga girl fainted, falling into Gai's ready arms, Lee turned to Tenten. "See, I told you to have a little more faith in her. She took that much better than you predicted."

-x--x--x-

The Sandaime's eyes ran over Team 9 before his gaze stopped on the bandages covering the Hyuuga girl's hand. He glanced at the team leader for a moment, but upon seeing no worry on his face, the Hokage mentally shrugged. If Gai thought she could handle the mission, then he would trust his jounin to know the limits of his students.

"One of our chuunin teams was injured in the line of duty," he began, before raising a hand at the obvious question one of them would probably ask. "No, I'm not asking you to replace them. What their injuries mean, however, is that one of the teams we assigned to protecting the western border towns will not be relieved and shall need to stay out there for an extra three months. A messenger bird has already been sent to them informing them of their extended tour."

He gazed at them for a moment. "What I need your team to do is to take their pay to them, since they will need to cover their expenses for their additional months. Usually the relieving team takes enough pay to cover the mission, but obviously that will not be sufficient in this case."

Tenten hesitated, before asking, "Hokage-sama, why can't we just send the money in an item scroll via another messenger bird?"

The Sandaime chuckled. "Because messenger birds can be intercepted and summoning seals can be broken. That is why we encode all messages sent via them, after all. Such encoding methods will obviously not work for money. There should be little need to worry, however; this is an unusual situation – bandits won't be expecting a payment shipment at this time of year so it should be an easy mission for you."

-x--x--x-

The journey started easily enough, even if Gai pushed them to go at a fast pace. On the second day of travel, he allowed them to stop into a roadside village for lunch. As his team finished their meals, he ducked out to the men's room.

"So what's the bet that we don't get to do anything on this mission either?" Tenten noted in their teacher's absence.

"Um... Should… should we be talking about this here?"

Hinata's teammates blinked, looking around at their surroundings. There were several disinterested men sitting around them – presumably other villagers who had ducked into the store for a lunchtime meal.

"I guess you're right," Tenten agreed, toning her voice down to a whisper. "Let's just talk about casual topics then." She raised her voice again as she asked Hinata, "So, I noticed that the kunai you use have some top-quality workmanship. Where do you buy them from?"

-x--x--x-

The farmer walked out of the inn, whistling to himself as he returned to his home. Once he was there, he whipped out a small scrap of paper and furiously wrote some words down. Walking over to a cage, he took out a homing pigeon and attached the paper to it. After the bird was released into the air, the farmer shook his head. "I don't know why you wanted us to be on the lookout for a kid with a panda hairstyle, but you better keep your word and pay for me for doing this."

-x--x--x-

On their second night, it was Hinata's turn to prepare dinner. She was quite nervous, since it was her first time doing the task. Gai and Lee had taken their turns on their first C-rank mission, while Tenten had taken the previous night. After preparing the meal, she handed portions out to her teammates, her hands shaking so much that she almost threw the food in their faces.

She leaned forward, her eyes widening as she watched them take their first bite, before she realised that she was rudely staring. Hinata glanced away, looking to the sky, but couldn't maintain her indifference for more than a second before she returned her eyes to her team.

"Wow, this is pretty good," the weapons girl noted before taking another bite.

"I agree," Gai noted. "A good meal greatly helps in strengthening your youth."

"Tenten-san and Gai-sensei are correct," Lee agreed. "You must practice cooking regularly to have prepared such a delight over something as rudimentary as a campfire."

"Um… actually…" Hinata hesitated, flustered at all her teammates' praise. "I've only cooked a few times in my life. The… the chefs were always nervous about the clan head's daughter doing such things. But…" She looked down at the ground and admitted, "but I like to cook."

"Hinata-san," the genin boy hesitated, before asking, "how many times is a 'few'?"

The Hyuuga girl quickly counted in her head. "Five." Seeing the haunted expression on his face, she quickly added, "-or so."

"That's pretty impressive," Tenten admitted. "I mean, I don't cook all the time at home, but I do it whenever I'm not training and Dad's working back late. He can get pretty busy in the shop for long periods of time – if I hadn't started buying the groceries years ago we'd probably have both starved. But even with some experience, the dinner I made yesterday wasn't anything like this. You must be a natural."

"Tenten-san is correct," Lee agreed. "I have been cooking for myself for several years now, and as you would remember, the meal I produced on our last C-rank was nowhere near as good as this. Hinata-san," he paused, before suddenly standing and pointing at her, "You are clearly a genius of the cooking arts! I promise to work hard to improve my cooking skills so that one day I too can become an excellent chef!"

His teammates stared at him for a moment before Tenten shook her head. "I can feel a headache coming on, so I'm going to bed. I'll take the last guard shift."

-x--x--x-

The third night brought Lee's turn around again in the dinner rotation, and brought a new problem to Tenten.

"Look, don't drag me into this."

"But Tenten-san," Lee argued, "as our teammate you would be the best person suited to judging the meals that Hinata and I produce."

"No offence Lee, but if she's this far ahead of you with so little practical experience then you'll never catch up. So therefore I'm not going to get in the middle of this. If you want to get into a competition then talk to Gai-sensei for a moderator, not me."

Twenty seconds later she regretted her suggestion as she heard her instructor's loud voice.

"Why Lee, I shall gladly help guide you in improving the cooking fires of your youth!"

-x--x--x-

"Looks like your informer was correct," the wiry missing-nin noted as he looked through his binoculars. "Here they come. Thankfully we'll be able to conclude this farce of a bet quickly."

The leading bandit nodded while the missing-nin looked at the other ruffians who had joined them in their raiding party.

"How did you convince this lot to help?" the missing-nin asked, mildly curious.

"I told them that the ninjas were carrying a lot of money for their mission," the bandit whispered back. "Damn fools fell for it. It doesn't matter just as long as they distract the adult shinobi for a while so that the girl is taken out."

"I wouldn't worry about their team leader," the missing-nin noted as he looked back into his binoculars. "If he fights like he dresses, then my five year-old nephew could take him down."

-x--x--x-

The large missing-nin shifted into position behind his quarry. In a few minutes the Konoha team would be in range of the bandit ambush. When that happened, he would confront this supposed wonder girl and soon thereafter he would be counting his hard-won gambling money. An easy job if ever there was one.

His eyes narrowed from his vantage point as he watched the girl run forward. What was she doing?

A second later, she quickly crouched and then stood again, while twirling something in her hand. After the third revolution, she twisted around and tossed the item straight towards the bushes he was hiding behind. His smile widened. So, she had spotted him, had she? Well, she was welcome to make the opening gambit, but he could guarantee that she wouldn't like the counter attack that would follow.

Now then, what was it that she threw? A piece of rope? She was seriously throwing a piece of rope at him? With a small smirk, his hand shot out, catching the girl's weapon in his hand. As he looked down at his captured prize – mainly to ensure there were no explosive tags attached – his smile slipped.

"Oh shi-"

-x--x--x-

As Gai jumped into the overhanging branches and leapt away, Tenten walked up to Lee and asked, "Are you all right?" Her two teammates were looking at her oddly.

"I am fine," Lee hesitantly answered. "But what was that which you just threw?"

"Oh that? I saw it coming straight for you and it didn't look happy. I figured I'd better get rid of it before it took a bite out of you."

-x--x--x-

The brown tree viper, seen throughout the Land of Fire, was normally a placid creature despite its highly poisonous nature. Only two things could get it truly riled – the first was stepping in its path.

The second, apparently, was grabbing it by its tail, swinging it around a few times and then chucking it away like it was a bola or some other throwing weapon.

Like most animals of instinct, it quickly retaliated when it landed. One bite, while extremely painful, was not immediately fatal - especially not for Grass ninjas, who often carried common poison antidotes and antivenin on them.

Six bites delivered in a frenzied, enraged blur, however, certainly were.

-x--x--x-

"Tenten, don't you think that was a little cruel?"

The three genin blinked as their sensei rejoined their party, coming in from behind. Hadn't he been ahead of them just a minute ago?

Tenten blushed as her teacher's gaze remained upon her. "Yeah, I guess it was," she admitted. "It's just that… well, that animal was about to attack so I had to act before someone got hurt."

Gai kept his stern expression upon her for a few more seconds, before he nodded. "Very well. Just remember that there are ways to fulfil your duties as a shinobi without resorting to such harsh means."

The weapons girl hung her head at her teacher's remonstration, unused to negativity from him. Still, he was right. She had been a bit rough on that poor snake. "You're right. I promise it won't happen again."

"That is good to hear. Oh, and Tenten?"

She looked up at him.

"Good job."

-x--x--x-

The wiry man put down the binoculars, his face blank and unreadable. Snakes? Who thought of using a snake as a throwing weapon? Only someone who could apparently covertly discern their enemy's weakness and turn it against them. That girl must be a genius of the killing arts.

"Is he in position? Can we attack?"

The missing-nin turned to the bandit who had goaded his now-dead friend into attacking the young weapons prodigy.

"Yes. You can attack." With that said, he turned and faded into the foliage, leaving the bandits to their fate. After all, there were people who would want to know of this. As he moved out of earshot, he whispered to himself, "I told you your luck would run out one day, you over-confident idiot."

-x--x--x-

After they had walked about 100 metres away from Tenten's snake rescue, Hinata's hands formed familiar seals so that she could perform one of her twice-hourly scans of the area. It was unfortunate that she couldn't keep the doujutsu going indefinitely; she certainly didn't want to miss any more of those snakes. Her eyes widened as her ability took effect.

"Um… Gai-sensei…"

"Yes, Hinata?"

"There… there seems to be a lot of armed men sneaking towards us."

"Yes, they're not very good at being stealthy, are they?" Gai agreed. "How many are there?"

There were a few seconds silence. "I… I think there's sixteen. No, wait, seventeen."

"If they are bandits then why are they not attacking?" Lee asked.

"I presume they were waiting for us to fall into the large, concealed pit-trap which is covering the road just up ahead," Gai noted conversationally. "Everyone, get ready to turn your hard work into action. I'm sure they'll come for us in a moment when they see that we've stopped."

Each of the team quickly dropped their travel packs. True to their sensei's words, the bushes surrounding the road ahead began to rustle as the bandits surged forward.

"Lee, with me. Hinata, cover Tenten so she can concentrate on her throws. And Tenten, try not to kill them if you can." Hinata shook herself out of a moment of fear-induced paralysis when she realised that she needed to protect her teammate. Lee started to move forward, his eyes gleaming with excitement. Tenten looked at her sensei for a moment before mentally shrugging at his comment. Well, she was the one wielding all the pointy weapons after all, so his comment did make sense.

Ten of the bandits swarmed towards the jounin, trying to take him out with the weight of numbers. Three more converged on Lee as he moved to cover his teacher. The other four all raced towards the girls.

No, Hinata realised, her doujutsu giving far more precise details on their trajectories than normal eyesight could. Not towards them. Towards Tenten. They were all going for her teammate. As the weapons girl leapt into the air, her weapons scroll unfurling, Hinata made her decision and raced forward to intercept.

Tenten cursed as Hinata moved into her field of vision. She couldn't risk attacking the four while her teammate was in the way, not with the chance that Hinata would jump into one of her throws. Reluctantly she began targeting the ones swarming Gai, aiming for legs and arms and trying not to think about the blood that she was about to spill.

Hinata managed to take down the first bandit easily enough, knocking him unconscious with a strike to his weapons arm, followed by one to his sternum. Instead of attacking her, the second bandit tried to run by her. Her eyes widened as she realised that they were still going for Tenten. She hesitated for a split-second. The weapons girl might be able to take care of herself, but on the other hand maybe she couldn't while she was in the air activating her scroll.

Besides, her sensei had told her to protect the girl. Decision made, she made up for her moment of indecision by racing up to the second bandit and striking several points on his back. When he collapsed, the other two bandits seemed to give up on reaching Tenten as they concentrated on her instead.

Both men attacked her right side, no doubt having seen her injured hand. Improvising, she pivoted on her heal and kicked the man in the chest with the same technique as one of the ones that her father used on her in their sparring match. To her, it wasn't a very powerful kick. To a man who had not spent the last five years training to be a ninja, it felt like his ribs shattered. As the third man fell to the ground, the fourth attacked.

Unlike the other bandits, this one had some skill. He definitely knew how to wield the sword he was carrying, and he was moving a lot faster than the other men. If she hadn't been so busy dodging his attacks, she might have had the time to guess that he had some ninja training. Hinata kept dodging the sword strikes, at one time bending her back so that it was parallel to the ground for a moment as she avoided a horizontal swing. The experienced bandit took this opportunity of imbalance to kick her feet out.

He raised his sword to give the impetus for a killing blow, when his wrists were struck with a bo staff. Yelling in pain as he involuntarily dropped his weapon, he looked to his right. The bandit's face paled when he saw who was wielding the staff. "What? But if you're here then that means you…" After a moments hesitation, he turned and started to run off, only to have his feet tripped up by Tenten's bo staff a moment before his face met Lee's fist.

As the bandit crumpled to the ground, Lee grinned at his female teammates for a moment. His brow was covered in sweat, probably from pushing his body to perform at its peak while wearing his weights. "This mission is certainly shaping up to be more interesting than our last C-class!" he noted. Behind him the girls could see their sensei tying up the thirteen bandits who had never made it to them.

Tenten nodded. "Yeah, it was good to finally get a chance to try out some of my moves."

Hinata slowly rose to her feet, her eyes hidden in the shadow of her hair as she looked at the ground. She'd almost got killed, and this time her defeat wasn't by her teammates or the skilled leader of her clan. It was by a bandit who had probably only ever received minimal martial training.

"Well thrown, Tenten!" Gai complemented as he walked up. "The ones you hit will be feeling those wounds for a while, but they'll be fit for facing the closest town's justice."

"And superb job, Hinata."

The Hyuuga girl looked up, puzzled.

"Not only did you take down three opponents with ease," her teacher continued, "but you also kept the only bandit with any weapons talent busy for long enough to be surprised by your teammate."

"But… but he almost got me."

Gai nodded. "Do not forget that your enemy had a considerable reach advantage with his sword, and he also appeared to have genin-level fighting abilities. Still, this presents you with a great opportunity to train and improve your ground-to-standing recovery time when we get back to Konoha."

Their teacher turned to their male teammate. "I see that you managed to move at a good speed during that fight. Good job Lee, you're clearly adjusting to the weights." As Gai walked away, he added over his shoulder, "We'll add some more to them when we get back to the village."

Lee gaze a shaky thumb-up in response, before his legs gave out from the strain he had put them through.

-x--x--x-

The bandit groaned, consciousness quickly returning.

"Sensei, we've got a live one here!" A light voice called out, piercing through the man's headache.

His eyes opened to see the face of the girl who had haunted his nightmares for the past month. The bandit shivered as he stared up at her, the weapons mistress who stood there without a scratch on her after she must have taken out that large chuunin missing-nin. Was he to be her next target?

"Please don't kill me!" The bandit begged as the pink-clad killing machine towered over him. She looked at him for a moment, before knocking him unconscious again with her bo staff.

"What a drama queen," she muttered to herself as she dragged him over to be tied up with the rest of his unconscious companions.

-x--x--x-

The rest of their mission was uneventful. They reached the town where the ninja were stationed and handed over their next three months of pay, while also informing the town's police of the location of the captured bandits.

Unfortunately they arrived late in the day, and so they did not have much time to sightsee before they retired to an inn for the night after which they left the town early the next morning. On their ninth day since leaving Konoha, they returned to their home village.

As they headed for the Hokage Tower, Gai gently guided Tenten aside for a moment and whispered, "There may be a reward for your actions before the battle. I realise that some shinobi do not enjoy being compensated for such things, so I wanted to check with you first on whether you wanted to claim it."

The weapons girl blinked. What was he talking about? The only thing she did _before _the battle was… ohhh, he meant the thing where she threw that snake away and maybe saved Lee's life. If they rewarded you for things like saving your teammate's life, then she could see what her teacher meant about shinobi getting embarrassed over such a payment. As Lee had once reminded her, the whole point of teamwork was to help each other out without expecting something in return. On the other hand…

"Well money's always good, I guess… but I didn't do anything that the other two wouldn't have done for me. If there's any reward you should split it equally."

Gai smiled, tears of pride shining in his eyes. "Yosh! You're a credit to your team, Tenten. But I can see that you're embarrassed about this, so do not worry - I shan't bring it up in front of your teammates."

-x--x--x-

Once the genin had reported in, been paid, and left, Gai turned to his leader. Before he could speak, the Sandaime shook his head and said, "So what was the body count this time?"

Gai blinked. "Just the one, sir. Her choice of assassination methods was a little unusual, but Tenten again spotted the danger and neutralised it before I intervened." He took some papers out of his vest and handed them over. "Here, I took his identification off the body."

Sautobi nodded, pulling out a bingo book from his drawers and matching the passport photo up to a description. After reading it, he looked up, eyes narrowing. "According to this the man comes from a clan renowned for its focus on 'absolute defence'. How did Tenten manage to take him down?"

"She enraged a poisonous snake and threw it at him so that it would start biting, sir."

The silence hung in the air for a few moments, before the old man nodded. "Innovative. If she keeps this up we may have to investigate inducting her into ANBU when she's a little older."

-x--x--x-

"-and then I conked him on the head and tied him up," Tenten said, finishing her tale to her father.

"So you're alright? No injuries?"

"I'm fine, Dad. And luckily I even managed to get through it all without having to kill anyone. A few of them will be limping for a while, but I guess it's better than the alternative."

"Well, hopefully it will be a while yet before you're forced to do that. But just remember that I'm here for you if it ever does happen, Blossom."

-x--x--x-

Hinata smiled, looking up at the decorations that Tenten was putting up, before she put a box of empty balloons down between the weapons girl and her sensei. The Hyuuga girl brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her right hand, which was now fully healed. Behind her, Lee was setting the cutlery on a long table.

Purposedly, none of the team voiced aloud or even tried to think about how a D-rank mission to set up a house for a boy's birthday party could go wrong.

"Ah, good, so our client did have some balloons after all," Gai noted. As Hinata tentatively reached for one of the balloons, he shook his head. "No, no. I'll blow those up. I have another task for you, Hinata." He pulled a list up from a nearby desk and handed it to her. "Here. We are still missing these items to make this celebration a truly momentous one. If you could head to the local stores and procure them, that would be most helpful."

The Hyuuga girl blinked. "Shopping? But after last time… after last time, wouldn't someone else be better suited for this?"

Gai chuckled. "Nonsense, Hinata. Now is the perfect time to 'get back on that horse', so to speak. I'm sure you'll do a fine job in getting everything."

Hinata looked at the list, before looking up at her sensei and nodding. "I won't hesitate this time. I promise."

As she was about to leave, Tenten waved to her and said, "Just remember – there's only one rule to shopping - it's not theirs until they pick it up."

-x--x--x-

She wasn't going to make the same mistake again as last time. As soon as she stepped into the largest market in Konoha, Hinata activated her Byakugan, quickly expanding her sight to find and take stock of the items on her list. The store was extremely large, with shelves stretching into the distance on both sides of the entrance, forming an impenetrable wall of goods before her. But with her clan ability, she could prevail. Hinata rapidly made her way down the list, marking comments next to each item as required. The market was well stocked, so for most items she was quickly writing down 'plenty'. When she reached the third last item – BBQ chips, she paused. After focussing her vision, she soon found her prey lying in wait ten aisles over. Her eyes widened when she realised that there were only three chip bags left, which were sitting on a specials table in the middle of the aisle, and someone who had to be an Akimichi was heading straight for them.

Deactivating her doujutsu, in a moment she had made her decision. She had promised that she would not hesitate again. Tenten had much more experience at shopping than she did (since the weapons girl had been buying her family's groceries for years) so she must have a better idea of what was the correct shopping etiquette. If she said it was only over once someone picked it up, then Hinata would trust her judgement. It seemed terribly rude to do this, but for the sake of the mission, she would try her best.

Her body tensed, head snapping back to look up. With a leap, her hands caught the top of the shelving in front of her. She tucked her body, drawing her legs up until she was almost vertical in a handstand, before she bent her arms and used her strength that was hard-earned through exercise in order to push herself up. A moment later, her chakra-emitting feet were sticking to the ceiling of the store.

As she began running upside down, carefully maintaining her gait so that one foot was always attached to the ceiling, she couldn't help but be glad for once that she was so short. If she'd been any taller, she'd have had to keep ducking out of the way of the stock that was stacked on top of the shelves, and wouldn't have been able to run at full speed.

-x--x--x-

The noticeably chubby boy stopped, his face lit with awe. It was true. It was all true. When he had returned to the clan holdings after classes for the day, he had thought that his kin had been playing a joke when they told him that his favourite food was being sold for half-price in a one-day sale. But here it was. The near empty table told him that he was clearly not the first to have partaken in this holy grail, but there was still just enough stock left to light his face with joy.

As he started to reach for the ultimate prize, a flash of movement from above caught his eye and his head lifted to track the oddity. His mouth dropped open when he saw a dark-haired girl dropping from the ceiling onto the floor in front of him. In a moment, she was staring at his quarry with determination on her face. Instincts realising her intent, even if his head had not, his hand started to reach towards the precious treasure, even as his eyes remained glued to her.

In a moment, she shot forward, arms held back and stiff to reduce wind-resistance as she ran with all her speed. Before he could blink, her momentum was sufficient, and she jumped. The boy could only stare as the girl leapt high over the table, her body flipping so that for a moment she was upside-down. In that moment, her hands stretched down, grabbing the three last bags of chips, before her momentum pushed her over the table and her spin righted her orientation so that she landed on the store's floor on her feet. Without any hesitation, she burst forward into a run, quickly reaching the end of the aisle.

"I'm really very sorry! It's… It's for a mission!" the girl shouted over her shoulder before sprinting around the corner.

The pleasantly plump boy looked between the corner that the girl disappeared to, and back to his empty outstretched hand. He grabbed at empty air for a moment, in disbelief that his prize had been snatched from him at the last moment, before he shook his head and asked, "What just happened?"


End file.
